Launched into your amateur radio adventure you’re faced with figuring out what you need to fly. If you have a web browser, you can start listening to a massive array of online radio sources … today.

Beyond that, a handheld radio is often the first purchase for a new amateur, more often than not followed by the acquisition of a more advanced radio and associated paraphernalia, antenna, coax, power supply and the like.

A video of forging the “Most Iconic Swedish Axe”, by Torbjorn Ahman, a Swedish Blacksmith, started off with making several tools, before the axe forging itself got underway. It reminded me that in the amateur radio community we often talk about radio with rarely any mention of any toolkit.

Spend six seconds thinking about this and you’ll likely come up with a soldering iron and a multimeter as your next investment, but what happens after that?

While not universal, truth be told, my soldering iron has very little use, though half a century ago it was probably essential. My multimeter gets more use, even though it really doesn’t do any radio tricks. Its most used feature is continuity testing.

One proper bit of test gear is an antenna analyser that we use most times anyone plays with antennas.

Several years ago, I was given a lovely NanoVNA which gets a regular workout though calibration is a bit cumbersome. I was also given an inline power meter that provides all manner of battery health information. I take it to every portable operation.

Gadgets aside, the tools I use more than all of these put together are a quality wire cutter and an Anderson Powerpole crimper with all the connector housing colours. There’s also a comprehensive set of screwdriver bits, enabling access to more equipment than I have time to investigate.

A 15 Watt dummy load, good to 150 MHz, gets regular use, and to complete the picture, underneath my desk is a HP 606A signal generator that I’m scared to restore. Last time I went near it, I managed to trip the house RCD for reasons I still don’t understand.

There’s other stuff in boxes and drawers, but I clearly don’t use them enough to come to mind.

Unremarked is my computing infrastructure. Until a couple of years ago that consisted of a 27" iMac, vintage 2015. Expanded to 64 GB of RAM, it ran all my software using VMware, sometimes a dozen or so virtual computers simultaneously. It died in 2024 when the power cord managed to short itself on my portable desk, yes, that too tripped the RCD. Although I didn’t lose any data, due to a perfect storm of incompatibility, it’s been nearly two years before I found the beginnings of a replacement, a small form factor Lenovo IdeaCentre with 32 GB of RAM running Proxmox.

If I was made of money, I’d probably find space for an oscilloscope and a signal generator, perhaps even a proper network analyser, but truth be told, most of my adventures these days are in the software realm. That’s not to say that there is no place for such gear, just that I suspect that they’d feel overwhelming rather than something I’d grab to solve a problem.

That said, regular posts by Ismo OH2FTG about resurrecting all manner of broken testing equipment revealed to me that a surprising number of these tools are essentially a computer with an operating system, running some custom application that presents itself to the user via a display. Apparently you haven’t lived until you see a Windows boot loop on your Agilent oscilloscope.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, the “HP 8920A RF Communications Test Set” that I played with a while back runs what looks like a version of DOS, which comes on ROM chips, according to HP taking 2 hours to replace for a firmware upgrade, and each of its in-built tests is a program written in HP Instrument BASIC.

This morning I walked into my office and spotted my PlutoSDR on my desk. If you’re unfamiliar, a PlutoSDR is a little box, blue, because of course colour matters, has two SMA coax connectors on one side and two USB sockets on the other side.

One antenna port is marked “Rx”, the other “Tx” and by connecting the two together, you can create a transmission and then receive it. While that sounds completely useless, it’s the exact same set-up as any number of bits of test equipment, to be clear, normally you have something you’re testing connected between the ports.

Combine that with a connected computer and you have the makings of some fancy test gear, capable of 70 MHz to 6 GHz. Since it’s all Open Source, you can write your code in your language of choice.

Of course I’m not the first person to come to this point. There’s tools around for making this reality, implementing oscilloscope, spectrum analyser and plenty more. I am already imagining what I might achieve with GNU Radio.

While there’s plenty of room for soldering irons in our community, I think it’s also worth considering what software might help in your toolkit.

I’m Onno VK6FLAB