Passed the General License exam this morning in Granite Bay, California. I’d been studying for about a month. But last night I thought to cram for it since there was an available exam going on in the morning about 50 miles north of me. I went through the whole General Exam question pool. I was unsure of so many answers, and not even halfway through all questions, that I thought, “I’m never going to pass this thing.” There’s a bit of math and frequency allocation memorization needed, as well as understanding schematic diagrams and figuring out ohms, picofarads, and millihenries. But I did power through the studying, referring often back… Read More
Continue ReadingFirst 10 Meter QSO!
This is probably old hat to the veteran hams out there but this evening I finally, successfully, made clear contact on 10m SSB phone! A milestone for me, after tons of antenna research and tuning around on the frequencies forever. Stockton Delta Amateur Radio Club (SDARC) has a weekly informal net on 28.457 MHz SSB, and whenever I could be at my radio on Thursday evenings, I’ve tried to make contact during this net to no avail. This evening, I decided to move my poorly-placed (6 ft off the ground against a wooden fence) 10m dipole a few feet outward toward the open air, and waited. I should also mention… Read More
Continue ReadingBeing a Ham Means Figuring Things Out
A setback day today, as I finally received a USB audio cable for my attempts to use fldigi with my mac laptop (one of the few SDR programs that works on macOS). I was so looking forward to CQ’ing on my available bands with CW in an automated sense, but no luck. The USB audio cable I ordered (manufactured in Greece, no less), doesn’t seem to work. It is quite frustrating to wait forever for the requisite parts only for me to once again face the world of failure and non-support on Apple Mac computers. The ham software world is very driven by Windows software, something hams really need to… Read More
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