Hobbsc's latest phlog entry [0] got me thinking about amateur radio.
I've been a ham for nine years, I have a general license in the
US. I never did too much with it, although I have an HF transceiver
and at one point I had started to learn morse code [1].
Given that I'm now living in Canada, I've been thinking about
getting my Canadian license, as there is no license reciprocity
between the two countries. While I can transmit here on my US
license, technically that is only for visitors to Canada, not
residents. Also, my US license is expiring next April, so that is
giving me a bit more incentive to get licensed here.
The licenses are different than in the US, here they have just two
license classes - basic and advanced. If you score higher than 80%
on the basic test, you get it 'with honours' and get all band
privileges. Due to that I suspect most people opt not to go for the
advanced license. The test itself is the usual 100-question multiple
choice, taken from a pool of questions that are freely available
(with answers, as in the US). There is also a 5wpm morse
qualification, which is another way to get all band privileges with
a basic license.
Speaking of morse code, one of the better trainers I found was the
free IZ2UUF Koch android app. I liked it better than lcwo or the
ARRL code course because it was highly configurable. I did try
several of the console morse trainers in the Debian repos (although
I did not try aldo), but in the end I found the android app or just
listening to the ARRL course mp3's (ripped from the CDs) more
convenient.
[0]
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/hobbsc/phlog/20170805.org
[1]
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/slugmax/phlog_archives/learning_morse_code
[2]
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf01008.html#s4.4
