Posted on 04/09/2009 12:44:48 AM PDT by Clinging Bitterly
Congrats! You have a right to be proud.
My hubby is a Ham & I’m always proud of him, too
Hey! I just passed technicians at your link without studying at all!
I got the techy stuff right, I just missed dumb stuff like who is the ITU
Missed 5 questions.
It can be for folks into that sort of thing and certainly plenty are. There are more than a couple rigs on the market well in excess of $10,000 - for just a rig.
I have spent something close to that more or less for all the rigs & other gear I ever bought in 31 years, including computers I used exclusively within the hobby (one of the computers being the single largest expense).
IMO once you get past the range of something close to a grand or maybe two the return in increased performance and usefulness rapidly diminishes and the true product becomes more often than not a bragging right.
There are no doubt exceptions and also buyers with very specific interests who can justify the huge feature sets from a pure economic standpoint. But we don't now and probably should never limit our market choices to pure need and nothing more because we know that concept has failed 100% of the times it has been tried.
I can drool over this FTDX9000/MP or that IC-7800 with the best of them, and can dream even bigger without much arm twisting, but the flush and cash starved are both more likely to bring home a round steak than a Porterhouse on payday. For the exceptions we still have the Porterhouse though so everybody gets what they want.
Doh... just flunked the general.
Missed 14
Well there ya go. Get thee to a local VE session and bring it home!
I will have to take the plunge.
I can't forget my Elmer either and sent word up his way, can hardy wait for his reaction.
Great!
Take the real one and pass it!
You have to take the Tech exam and pass it first anyway.
Go through the general class flash cards one time paying attention to only the correct answers and I’ll bet you will do measurably better the next time.
Wish me luck. I am going to go for it.
Gives me an excuse to put this antenna mast up and stimulate the economy L0L
Learning the material for the test won't be that hard. The technical part of it is pretty basic & you probably know most of it already. The rest is mostly FCC (and as you saw ITU) regulations, which actually make sense once the basic concepts are understood, plus some questions about operating practice that are pretty much common sense.
But go with confidence you'll bring something home, and stay until you quit passing tests or run out of tests to pass.
For a first license you have to wait until a callsign is issued and you can get that from the FCC webstite within a few days and begin operating before the license arrives in the mail.
When you upgrade your new privileges are effective the moment your examiners sign your CSCE.
“ITU”
I knew it wasnt the “International Telecommunications Underwear”
UNION! damn nit Union!
I will try to remember when I take the test L0L
I do need to brush up on propagation, heck, it is an the very heart of the hobby and it has been 27 years since I studied that sort of physical science
Honestly I need to put the latest models in my head and brush up on propagation myself. I know the basic concepts but not much advanced theory, plus new things have been learned since I last studied the topic.
I am limited on real estate. I am on a city lot in a small town. My elevation is low so a decent tower is in order.
Luckily restrictions arent bad at the moment so I need to act fast. (I only have one neighbor) on the south
As far as rigs go, as you said.. the sky is the limit on dreaming.
My major limitations are elevation (455 feet)
Lot size 80x100? feet but I have 30 foot of easement to work with N/S and a field behind me E/W
I am only a SWL My current set up is a ten tec RX350d and a Par End Fedz EF-40 antenna oriented as a sloper facing NE up in a tree about 30 foot up
The little Par end fedz antenna I have will handle 200 watts.
That will get me started I suspose.
I am not ready for 1500 watts and uber towers.....yet..
Did I say RX 350D? I meant RX320D using Clifton Turners software KF50J
Everything is a compromise of sorts though in real life, there will be an issue be it high cost, difficult maintenance, and narrow bandwidth for your tower and beam, not enough room for your full size 80M dipole (actually you ought to be able to fit one). Narrow bandwidth and difficulty in achieving that perfect ground for your vertical, and so on. But some kind of metal in the air will almost always get you something so it's a matter of degree.
The Scotch in me really likes to mess with wire antennas because they are cheap and simple. I put up a "full size" G5RV multiband dipole which is 103' long overall plus a approx. 30' long 450 ohm ladder line feed section that hangs from the center. With a tuner it will work on any band 80M and up. I have it mounted inverted vee style with the apex 30' off the ground and the ends about 10'. That's obviously somewhat lower than ideal but it has worked great on 80M, 40M, and really great on 20M (it's true design frequency). Hasn't been enough openings above 20M yet to see what it'll do there but most of the guys that have them use them on the big three mentioned above quite successfully.
They are a love/hate thing though because that 450 ohm feed section does actually radiate as part of the antenna and some guys automatically think it's wrong to have radiating feedline. But that's the design and because of that it's especially important that all of the feed section be kept off the ground and away from metal for it to work right. A couple of other tricks help too that are actually easier to do than explain in this space.
My next antenna project is going to be a a 40M NVIS (near vertical incident skywave) antenna. It's an interesting design because it's mounted at a specific close distance to the ground on purpose, to work against the ground and have a high radiation angle. The idea is to eliminate most of the DX (especially broadcast stations and the noise that comes along with them) and reliably work closer stations out to 300 miles or so without interference from the foreign broadcasts or most of the noise. To me that sounds like a great tactical design (and it is, coming from WWII German forces and Vietnam era US forces).
I have seen you talk about that EF-40 before, so it sounds like you're good to go on 40. Heck you don't even need a tuner (but should get one anyway). I don't know what the magic is in it but it sure reviews great. I'm gonna have to find out if something like that will work in NVIS configuration, because I envision some interesting ways to package it. And it looks like it's Scotch cheap too.
So really you need a rig and a ticket and you're ready to go. Lots of good, basic 100W solid state rigs vintage 15-20 years are going fairly cheap on Ebay. I was shopping not long ago because my FT747 was giving me fits. But I finally located a factory installed booger of solder on the filter unit that was concealing a bubble of air that was causing my intermittent loss of RX. Touched it with the iron and it dropped to the solder pad where it belonged and it has been no trouble since. Seems they just throw together some of that lower priced stuff and as a result they need some fixing from time to time. But we are talking hobby grade stuff. So I shouldn't complain. The old Yaesu is close to 20 years old and that's the only trouble it has given me. The frustration was making so many attempts to find the problem before finally finding it.
Also I bash around R/C nitro monster trucks and they cost about as much as a cheap HF rig, and they NEVER work right out of the box.
You have a nice receiver already and that's something that will be helpful to you.
Whatever you do though don't fall for a QRP rig unless a QRP rig is what you want. More a challenge for a skilled operator, it seems to me.
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