Saturday morning i took the test for the Amateur Radio Extra license and passed ( 49/50 ). So I have finished all of the testing that one can do in the Amateur Radio world…done…completed..finished…etc. I don’t remember if I talked about this before, but I wrote a perl application to help me go through the entire question pool for all of the amateur radio tests. It has some useful features, and I found it invaluable for preparation. There’s a chance that I might be doing something interesting with all that I learned from putting that together. We’ll see.
I bought a variac a few weeks ago to help me in experimenting with cutting foam wings for the r/c flying thing. While we were waiting for the test results from the extra test, dad got to talking to a guy about bringing old equipment back online and this guy recommended using the variac to slowly ( over the course of an hour or so ) bring the equipment back up to full voltage.
So yesterday, we pulled the Hammarlund receiver out of the attic, cleaned it up a bit, and hooked it up to the variac, and started applying power. Before long, we were pulling in some random signals off of a random wire antenna about 4 feet long. Very very cool. Now I just need to get a longer piece of wire.
We stopped by frys to pick up a book and while we were there I picked up a training cd for assissting you in learning cw ( morse code ) yesterday we started listening to that a bit. Amy was sitting there with us while we were bringing up the receiver and listening to the cd, and when they started sending out random code bits she started to copy. She seemed to take to it pretty easily, so who knows, she may have her ticket before this is all over with.
I wasn’t looking for another hobby, but i was looking for a space for me to learn more about electronics and have interesting things to fiddle with in the electronics world. I think this might be a good place for me to play.
When I was just out of high school, and working my tail off for $6/hr I found a class put on by the local ham radio club. It was in preparation for obtaining your Novice class license. I attended the classes and took the theory test and passed that ( electronics/radio theory/operations etc) but I had to finish up my morse code testing in order to get my Novice license. I was able to get ahold of a program that would allow me to finish the code test and was doing pretty good and then I visited the local ham radio store, and they informed me that noone built their own equipment anymore, so they didn’t carry kits.
The whole draw for me towards amateur radio was to get involved in electronics in a meaningful way, the talking to people parts of amateur radio didn’t hold a draw then, but the idea that you could build something out of parts, learn something in the process, and the have a great way to see if you had done it right ( by being able to talk to someone ) had a LOT of appeal for me. So when I heard that “people didn’t build their own gear anymore” i lost interest.
As i’ve gotten older I realized that I should have asked another ham radio guy if you could get kits, and NOT a businessman that made his money by selling manufactured radios. Oh well.
My parents came into town last month and were looking to get their licenses so that they would have emergency communications equipment in the event they were camping somewhere that had poor cell reception. I ordered the books for them and thought i may as well get my technician license since they were doing it and because there is no morse code requirements anymore. When i ordered the books I also ordered the 2007 Arrl Radio Handbook as I was paging through the book I saw all of these radio designs for building your own gear! People still do it, all the time. Hot diggity damn!
So after we passed the technician test, i went down to Fry’s and picked up the General Test Prep guide, and went through that, in fact, my mom and my dad decided to take that test too. Yesterday we all passed that test, so after the test I happened to be in Fry’s again, and decided to pick up the Amateur Extra Test Prep guide. Dad and I are currently fervidly studying for this test trying to get it done by the beginning of June. Good challenge! With the Extra license I will have the highest amateur radio license you can obtain in the US. I’ll have rights to use all amateur frequencies in all modes granted to the amateur service by the fcc.
More on this later..