Posted on 04/09/2009 12:44:48 AM PDT by Clinging Bitterly
I have been a licenced Ham operator since 1978. I have had a Technician Class license since 1982 - this was back in the days when you had to go to an FCC office to take the tests, which at the time for me was about 200 miles from home.
Since US Ham Rado went No Code in 2007, I have been qualified to upgrade to General Class by simply going to a test session and filling out some paperwork. The reason for the "free" upgrade is the exam elements I passed back in '82 are the same as for the General Class today.
So, tonight there was a test session in town and I went in to get my grandfathered upgrade. While there the examiners suggested successful applicants (which I would be by default) could move on and test for successive upgrades without extra cost or penalty beyond time spent so I said what the heck. I had within the past month browsed the question pool (a public record by law) and already figured there's no way I could pass this right now, but nothing ventured nothing gained they say.
And the test was hard. It had a few gimmes, a surprizing number of questions covering advanced theory that related to things I'd specialized in and even pioneered in years past, a lot of stuff I sort of knew but not in depth, and the remainder, about equal to the margin between acing and passing, that I knew little about at all. But going through it I became more encouraged as I went along, and in the end I passed with exactly the minimum required number of correct answers, and as one of the examiners said, it doesn't matter whether you aced it or barely passed, it isn't posted on the wallpaper and you don't have to sign with your score in the EXTRA CLASS sub bands.
And I am so jazzed, and for more on WHY I am so jazzed, read the comment body. The link above goes to nothing specific but there you can discover how to join the fraternity yourself. I am glad to have returned, and anxious to see what's new.
Congratulations! I’ve held an Advanced ticket since 1993 (got my no-code “Tech Minus” in 1992) and really should go ahead and test for Extra one of these days. I wanted to do it before the code restrictions were lowered from 20 wpm to 5, but I barely scraped by getting the 13 wpm for General!
When I first got my license I worked with a local club (LARC, Lynchburg, VA) and did a lot of event and public-service work with them. I loved it. I remember one long-distance charity bike tour circa 1994, we got there at zero-dark-thirty in the morning only to be told by the organizer that “oh, we have cellphones, we don’t need you.” (Remember, this was 1994...the cellphones were the big brick type.) We hung around anyway. Two hours later when the cellphone batteries began to die, we were in position and smoothly took over and saved the day.
I haven’t been active in years, sadly, my only rig right now is a tiny little Yaesu FT-817 with a portable antenna that can barely push a signal across the street, much less across the country. Money’s too tight to get back into it. Some days I kick myself for donating my old FT-101E to a club in South Carolina rather than move the boat anchor when I moved a few years ago.
}:-)4
Congratulations on your upgrade. I’m about to take the General exam in a couple of weeks. Have passed it twice already but putzed around and didn’t take the code portion so now I have to do it again. 73s
Ham from back when you actually had code requirements. Morse code! Still one one the funnest way to communicate....OK OK one of the funnest RADIO ways to communicate....
Drake "twins" (really)
HW-16 (love it!
HW-8
Vast array of HB gear
As for the FT817 I think they are a nice rig for what they are but the "only" 5W is a serious limitation that makes it not too useful for tactical purposes or even everyday (unless a dedicated QRPer). Still as a foundation for experimentation with antennas, deployment scenarios and so forth it would be an excellent rig and I'd love to have one for just those purposes. So if you want to get rid of it let me know (freepmail or whatever) and if it's something I can pencil out - cause I'm in tough times too having had no income the last seven months not to mention 40% of my net worth vaporizing overnight - you'd likely come out with enough scratch for something more suitable for everyday use.
So please let me know if you have any thoughts of selling it.
My thoughts on the code elimination is it's about freakin' time. I hope that doesn't offend anybody.
It was always the bugaboo to me (probably mostly on principle) because even back in ‘78 I thought of it as antiquated & didn't have a lot of interest in learning it just for sake of tradition.
It was easy enough for me to learn it enough to pass my Novice, and I did actually operate on the air some. Even picked up an electronic keyer and it was sort of fun (though the fun part of it for me was learning all of it's features, adjusting speeds, weights, programming memories, playing back sequences of stored strings and so forth) but still the other end, copying it in my head and writing it down, was never enjoyable to me.
In ‘82 I think I bombed pretty bad on the 13 WPM code test but the cute girl who ran the test session complimented me on acing the written (while refusing to go out with me to celebrate). I was ready for that outcome, certain I would pass the written and probably not the code, so I came home happy. And the Technician Class was key to my interests at the time, FM and repeaters.
Over the years I was very involved in our local club's activity developing our group's own site on the mountain from the bare rocks facing many challenges throughout the project. We built the cinder block building, the steel burglar proof door, fortified roof, varmint proofing, and in perfect antenna weather (a near blizzard) erected our 100’ Rohn 45G tower. This site had no commercial power and the cost to get it there was prohibitive, so we installed a propane tank and thermal generator and the site operated full time on “emergency power”. And that's how it was for several years until the power company itself wanted to install a microwave relay there, then getting power to the site changed from prohibitive to almost nothing virtually overnight.
With more power available we could fully utilize the building and tower space and we started drawing paying tenants, the first ones being the local fire and EMS outfits, then & still two separate entities. The cops put some off network tactical/backup stuff in, a couple local paging companies started out there and so forth, and we expanded our own presence with a 220 box, a multiport packet node, and eventually a 440 repeater. So we had a successful mini business on our hands that helped (though not completely) fund the group's many activities down the hill.
I also was involved in packet, building some stuff on my own and testing some prototype stuff on my VIC-20 computer and it's many successors. Packet and other digital modes, ruined some computers, fried some rigs, let the smoke out of I don't know how many various gizmos, ran one of the state's major packet BBSs, and was involved in some statewide and regional coordinating bodies. Throughout all that time I had little to no interest in HF (nor the time for it) and came to hardly ever pick up a mike on VHF/UHF.
And in early 2000 a project had me so frustrated, the time some things were taking with little to no progress and one day I just pulled the plugs and boxed up the whole shack and that was that. But I owned my own time again and that was a pleasure, so I hardly ever looked back.
My renewed interest is in emergency power, portable/mobile HF operation, and I intend to experiment with some rapid deployable antenna designs, power schemes and so forth. There will through necessity be some VHF/UHF operation but I haven't that gear out of the mothballs yet. Perhaps someday necessity will even bring me to CW. In fact I do sometimes find myself stopping in the CW subbands while spinning through just long enough to see who that is blasting through on a dead band, so there is hope.
Drake twins are great, that’s another I would have loved to had in days gone by.
I hear ARRL is going to launch online study courses (and there is something about it on their website) and I think that's going to appeal to a lot of folks if it's less expensive than their hard media.
The test was a bit surprising. I went in totally unprepared and didn't even have a calculator. Two questions out of 50 I might have used one on and still I think I got them correct. But I have a good sense of scale and am good at graphically visualizing mathematical concepts, had a good teacher in first year tech school that introduced those ideas and they have served me well. It's great for roughing things out and that's all you need for most multiple choice decisions.
There was very little on Amateur regulations but I suppose that's a reflection of the less limited privileges of the class. Just a couple Extra specific questions relating to VE duties and satellite stations and one freebie asking to choose an HF band that doesn't allow SSB or Image (30M duh).
Where I know I was weak was in some of the trivial nomenclature that related to actual RF circuits AND administrative things because in my graphic mind names mean nothing until they have been practiced IRL and discussed among peers. I don't know the Cabrillo format from polar coordinates, and couldn't tell Amsat mode M/U (or whatever) from the man in the moon, but I can tell you just about anything that's likely to be on the test about ASCII, BAUDOT, SSTV, or Packet. I have a lot to learn about propagation on HF, but could tell you all you need to know about it on VHF/UHF, then start falling off again at microwave.
But it all goes back to things I have actually done and learned by doing, or as I said up top even pioneering. And it was clear my real life experience carried the day.
Which is precisely why uneducated greybearded rednecks such as myself and countless others are valuable to society. It is informal authority that is seriously underrated and we need perhaps to assert ourselves more.
I'll give 10 a quick spin through once in a while just to see if anything’s going on ‘cause ya never know. Used 10 a lot on packet in years past and it was always lots of fun, like anarchy without the smashed windows.
Amateur radio will never be obsolete, due to the fact that one can communicate across the country or the world on 25 watts of power, with good conditions, and be totally portable, off the grid.
With the Fed gov wanting to regulate or do away with the Internet, ham radio will always be a nice alternative.
Easy for me to say I guess. I had to pay the 15 bones anyway so it was no risk, and I am a naturally risk averse person.
But if you're not too Scotch just do it.
I’d have to say that rig probably couln’t have landed in much better hands. Good find on the buyer and I reckon you got what you wanted for it.
If you receive HDTV over the air, then one computer (broadcaster) is talking to another (your HD set), only that's a one way communication).
‘78 for my Novice and that was all volunteer by then.
‘82 for Tech/Gen (written pass, code fail) it was still all FCC. Stayed the night before at sort of run down place out on Barbur Blvd. called the Capitol Hill Motel, because none of the places downtown Portland near the Fed office would take cash, even back then.
That was the last test I took up ‘til last night.
30M being digital only was the only band related question and it would have been maybe more appropriate for General.
But I do recall the General exam having a lot of coverage on all aspects of the FCC rules and I think it was the key make or break topic for that test.
Advanced I reckon was more mixed but as someone else said that's kind of an orphan now.
“What impact does the Internet have on ham radio? “
Internet is done alone. Hams get together. I remember going to the Ham radio hut next to the Greensboro NC airport to take classes. W4GG.
Ham is like the ultimate electronic gear geekdom.
Still waiting on sunspots here.....
/johnny
I posted last night (maybe here) about the Chi/Rus power grid thing. My hunch is they are wanting to reverse engineer the I/P because they do need that kind of tech and export controlled code therein makes it unavailable to them on the market.
I don't think it would be terribly difficult for them to design their own improvements but industrial espionage is more widespread than lots of folks think. I have dealt with spooks/counterspooks in my business because as a major dealer our company almost always had (and has) factory prototypes in it's AOR.
They spy because it costs relatively little and it will usually produce at least some results after connecting the dots. So with that in mind it's necessary in certain businesses to smell test product questions and make assessments as to a party's need to know.
As long as we remember where we buried our tube rigs, wrapped in aluminum foil.
++--≤]B^)
Question pool is available online as public record (reponse to first two questions, ignoring non-questioning parts of statements therewith).
Not presently.
I can't think of a bona-fide justification that existed in recent history (post WWII perhaps as a sort of coarse dividing line), but in years past it was the universal means of transmitting intelligence and absolutely necessary to know.
Yes.
It helps ensure an operator's ability to avoid causing harmful interference to other services and to one-another, among other things.
I don't think so.
Depends.
No.
No.
I don't think so.
Some might think so.
A lot in ways too numerous to mention in the time I have.
May appear so to some, but in reality not in any way that's important.
I believe these are the associated sites:
http://www.w5yi.org/
and http://www.GordonWestRadioSchool.org/
At least thats what Gordon said on Ted Randalls QSO last week.
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