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P

P5 : North Korea. For DX'ers, the most unattainable contact or a non-existent station. The rarest callsign prefix as one of two countries worldwide (the other is 7O Yemen) to have had no licensed radio amateur service at all since 2002.

Packet radio : An early digital radio mode developed in Canada in 1978.

PACTOR : An FSK mode that combines packet and AMTOR technologies.

Parabolic Antenna : An antenna in the shape of a dish with a parabolic cross section.

Parallel circuit : usually used to describe a tuned circuit in which the capacitive and inductive elements are parallel to each other.

PEP : Peak envelope Power. The average power sent to the transmission line by the transmitter. Can be calculated by multiplying Peak Envelope Voltage (PEV) by 0.707

Period : The time in seconds taken for a complete wave to pass a reference point, period is the reciprocal of frequency.

PEV :Peak Envelope Voltage. The maximum voltage on a transmission line during transmission.

Phonetic Alphabet Specific, easily identifiable, non-confusable words are used instead of the letters of the alphabet.

Piezoelectric Effect : the ability of a substance to produce an electric charge when it is deformed physically.

Pi pad  : one of the possible configurations used in Attenuators

PNP : A semiconductor device composed of an N layer sandwiched between two P layers.

Polarization : Used to describe the orientation of the electric field produced by an antenna compared to the surface of the Earth.

Portable: A mode of operation in which a station may be moved for rapid deployment from a temporary location, but is not able to operate while mobile. In CW, portable operators may identify using /P. Portable stations differ from mobile stations in that large antennas or other structures must be folded or stowed away in order to move the station to a new location. While well-suited to field day or emergency/disaster operations, portable stations normally do not have a mobile station's ability to continue transmission while in motion.

Power : The rate of energy consumption. Calculated by multiplying voltage by current, P = VI

Propagation : How well a signal is transferred from the sending station to the receiving station, as a function of the path type (ground wave, sky wave reflection or direct line-of-sight) and related atmospheric conditions.

PSK : Phase Shift Keying - a digital mode.

PTT : Push to talk