World Amateur Radio Day Celebrates Digital Success

World Amateur Radio Day is observed each year by the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU). The theme of this year's event on 18 September, Celebrating Success in Amateur Digital Communication, highlights the impressive contributions by the world's 2.7 million radio amateurs to progress in digital radiocommunication.

Radio amateurs began experimenting with packet radio more than 20 years ago. A number of different ways of sending digital data by radio were tried before a protocol known as AX.25 was devised. By the mid-1980s, long before its popularization in commercial and government services, packet radio had become a mainstay of Amateur Radio communication.

More recently, amateurs have developed and introduced to the world a number of improved systems for transmitting digital data reliably in the difficult high-frequency (HF) radio environment. HF communication depends on the ionosphere, which is in a state of constant and sometimes very rapid change. Sending error-free digital signals through the HF environment, where noise and distortion are nearly always present, is a significant engineering challenge. Digital modes developed by amateurs, including PACTOR, CLOVER, G-TOR, PACTOR II, and PSK 31, are recognized as having contributed enormously to the HF communications art.

Radio amateurs commonly use what they have learned through their avocation in contributing to other telecommunications services. The broadcasting, mobile, and satellite services, to name but a few, would be far less advanced were it not for the skills of radio amateurs who happen also to be radio professionals.

The IARU is a worldwide federation of national Amateur Radio organizations representing radio amateurs in 150 countries, and is a Sector Member of the International Telecommunication Union. Next year's World Amateur Radio Day will be held on 18 April 2000 to mark the 75^th anniversary of the founding of the IARU in Paris on that date in 1925.