Subj : Interested in Ham Radio?
To : tmcca
From : DaiTengu
Date : Tue Mar 21 2023 12:28 pm
Re: Interested in Ham Radio?
By: tmcca to All on Mon Mar 20 2023 12:55 pm
tm> Is it best to get licensed first than get first radio? What is suggested
tm> first radio? The technician license class teaches you the basics than they
tm> give you exam?
I'm going to give you the opposite suggestion from what others have given, here. Sort of.
Get yourself a cheap hand-held radio, or an SDR USB dongle that plugs into your computer, you can use these to tune around the 2m and 70cm bands and listen. Find local repeaters via repeaterbook.com and listen to them.
While you're doing this, study for your Technicians license. You can go the traditional route and use a study guide, which will give you important context to the questions/answers that are on the test, or you can go the memorization route where you just basically memorize the answers to every question.
Hamstudy.org is a great resource for the memorization route, and if you want to know why the answer to a question is what it is, it will expand a bit, and sometimes it'll give you some neat little tricks on how to remember the answer. It also has a companion app for Andriod and iOS. The app is a one-time cost of $3.99 but it's absolutely worth it.
If you have a ham radio club that's local to you, they will probably offer testing. Usually there's a small fee to take the test, (usually between $5 and $15) which goes directly to covering the costs of administering the test. The FCC charges a separate $35 fee to issue your license.
HamStudy.org also has a list of VECs that do online testing, which was first started back in 2020 because of covid. I took my Tech and General exams that way. The process is a little weird, as it required at least two cameras on me (my webcam, and my phone), to make sure I wasn't using notes and no one was feeding me answers from elsewhere. I guess lots of people just lock themselves in a bathroom with a laptop as it's usually a small area free of clutter.
DaiTengu
...A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.
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