Passed my technician exam

[hxpx]

I've been listening to the old dudes on the local GMRS repeater talk about french onion soup and basketball (separate conversations) for too long and decided I need different soup conversations*, so I took my technician exam today. Got 33/35. Thanks, hamstudy.org!

The proctoring team told me I should study for the general while this test still fresh, so that's the next goal. I have a certification exam I need to study for at work, but... that's not as much fun.

 

*the french onion soup conversation was the first thing I heard on the local repeater but the actual catalyst for getting an amateur radio license was I managed to catch some transmissions from the ISS a couple of nights ago. I was reading about how you could contact the ISS on 2m/70cm bands and then discovered the ISS was directly overhead. Ran outside with a HT and managed to catch what I assume were packet transmissions. Now I want to talk to a space station. 8 year old me would think it's the coolest thing ever. 42 year old me still thinks it's pretty rad. Maybe someone up there prefers broccoli cheddar soup.

[SteveShannon]

36 minutes ago, hxpx said:

I've been listening to the old dudes on the local GMRS repeater talk about french onion soup and basketball (separate conversations) for too long and decided I need different soup conversations*, so I took my technician exam today. Got 33/35. Thanks, hamstudy.org!

The proctoring team told me I should study for the general while this test still fresh, so that's the next goal. I have a certification exam I need to study for at work, but... that's not as much fun.

 

*the french onion soup conversation was the first thing I heard on the local repeater but the actual catalyst for getting an amateur radio license was I managed to catch some transmissions from the ISS a couple of nights ago. I was reading about how you could contact the ISS on 2m/70cm bands and then discovered the ISS was directly overhead. Ran outside with a HT and managed to catch what I assume were packet transmissions. Now I want to talk to a space station. 8 year old me would think it's the coolest thing ever. 42 year old me still thinks it's pretty rad. Maybe someone up there prefers broccoli cheddar soup.

That is very cool! Congratulations!  You’ll hear conversations on the ham bands like that too, but you’ll have a LOT more places to go to get away from them. 

[hxpx]

52 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

That is very cool! Congratulations!  You’ll hear conversations on the ham bands like that too, but you’ll have a LOT more places to go to get away from them. 

Thanks! I'm excited. There's a couple of amateur radio clubs in the area and I might be in range of their repeaters. I was also reading about POTA, which sounds kind of cool given the number of state parks and USFS land around here. (Not a lot of SOTA activity in Indiana, unsurprisingly.)

The GMRS repeater stays pretty active with a handful of locals. I thought the french onion soup thing was funny - I didn't have my GMRS license yet so I couldn't discuss broccoli cheddar soup supremacy.

[Socalgmrs]

 

[Socalgmrs]

1 hour ago, hxpx said:

 

I've been listening to the old dudes on the local GMRS repeater talk about french onion soup and basketball

 

Cringe.   

[AdmiralCochrane]

Be warned, where to get the best pizza seems to bring out hams on 2m repeaters.  Congrats.   Got for General ASAP, it is no harder to do than Tech and there is overlap in the question pool, you could already accidentally pass it on a lucky day.

[BoxCar]

Congratulations on the new license. Yes, General is a fairly easy upgrade but be careful as the toys are expensive.

[WRUU653]

Congratulations on the test and welcome. Let me know if you hear a good recipe for navy bean soup. It’s my favorite ham soup

[hxpx]

1 hour ago, AdmiralCochrane said:

Be warned, where to get the best pizza seems to bring out hams on 2m repeaters.  Congrats.   Got for General ASAP, it is no harder to do than Tech and there is overlap in the question pool, you could already accidentally pass it on a lucky day.

Out of curiosity, I took a general practice test with zero prep the other day and got maybe five questions right so I didn't think I should waste the test team's time today.  I'll study for it and try in a few weeks once I've got that work cert knocked out.

1 hour ago, BoxCar said:

Congratulations on the new license. Yes, General is a fairly easy upgrade but be careful as the toys are expensive.

Ouch, you're not kidding. I've bought motorcycles for less than some of the base transceivers I saw over at DX Engineering. Though to be fair, one of the bikes was like $600 and was older than me.

1 hour ago, WRUU653 said:

Congratulations on the test and welcome. Let me know if you hear a good recipe for navy bean soup. It’s my favorite ham soup

We bought a bag of split pea soup mix to make with leftover ham from Christmas, and then we forgot to make it.

[Lscott]

4 hours ago, hxpx said:

*the french onion soup conversation was the first thing I heard on the local repeater

I remember during COVID lockdowns I was out walking late at night for exercise with my HT to combat the boredom. Two Hams on a local repeater talked for an hour about their model railroad hobby. That was a refreshing break from the usual stuff you hear.

[WRPL700]

Congratulations!!!  Now get that General License!!! It greatly expands what frequency bands you are allowed on, which is important (from what I gather) since we will be losing 10M and 12M because of the 10 year solar sunspot cycle winding down.  Though they have not been that great here in the last month or so already.... I am a newer ham and am really enjoying 20M.  It is surprising how far you can comm with 20 watts when the ionosphere cooperates.

[WRCR724]

Congratulations. 

[FishinGary]

Congratulations! Definitely go for General next. If you're using hamstudy.org then you're on the right path. Consider Amateur Extra as well. Yes, it's a bigger lift, but you can do it. Just study like you studied for Technician and General.

[WRYZ926]

I did not study for or feel comfortable taking the general test when I took the technician test. I did pass the general test about two months later. It was pretty easy. And having your general definitely opens up more for you. 

I'm still trying to study for the Extra but I keep getting distracted and chasing other squirrels. Right now I am busy with an Arcom RC-210 repeater controller. assembling the board was the easy part, understanding the programming manual and actually getting the controller programmed is another story.

Plans are to connect the main 70cm repeater, a 70cm Allstar node, and our GMRS repeater to the RC-210.

[WRYZ926]

I forgot to mention that I was voluntold to assemble the controller board once the club realized that working with small components doesn't bother me. 

I learned my lesson not to talk about soldering tiny digital control boards to N Scale locomotives or showing off any radio/antenna/CW practice oscillators to club members 

[SteveShannon]

10 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

I forgot to mention that I was voluntold to assemble the controller board once the club realized that working with small components doesn't bother me. 

I learned my lesson not to talk about soldering tiny digital control boards to N Scale locomotives or showing off any radio/antenna/CW practice oscillators to club members 

I was always interested in electronics but before going back to college to become an engineer I spent eight years as a retail jeweler. Soldering small components while wearing my eye loupe was part of the job.
That worked well for me in my early engineering career because the company I worked for needed surface mount prototypes and I could do them in-house. 

[WRYZ926]

One of the best purchases I have made in the last few months was getting a digital microscope.

Here is what I ordered: TOMLOV DM9 Max Digital Microscope: 20MP 10.1" 1500X HD IPS HDMI.

And here is a photo of a digital command control board for n scale steam locomotives.

Those are either 28 or 30 gauge wires that have to be soldered to the electric motor and lights.

Here is a photo of the Arcom RC-210 board.

\

I had to solder everything onto the board. At least there weren't any tiny toroids that I had to wrap like on my QRP EFHW antenna.

As you can see, skills learned from other hobbies transfer over to amateur radio.

There are many different facets to amateur radio that one can explore. Having your general license opens up so many doors compared to a technician license.

 

[hxpx]

Neat! I've never been great at soldering, so I guess I'm going to have to learn. I've patched up some wiring harnesses but the few attempts I've made to fix small electronics usually ends up with the magic smoke escaping from the circuit boards. I'm more comfortable with macro level heat, like using a blowtorch to loosen a stuck bolt (and then shearing the head off it anyway).

[SteveShannon]

11 minutes ago, hxpx said:

Neat! I've never been great at soldering, so I guess I'm going to have to learn. I've patched up some wiring harnesses but the few attempts I've made to fix small electronics usually ends up with the magic smoke escaping from the circuit boards. I'm more comfortable with macro level heat, like using a blowtorch to loosen a stuck bolt (and then shearing the head off it anyway).

Get a good temperature controlled soldering station. I like Weller, but lots of people use Hako also. 
Second, get someone who knows what they’re doing to show you the basics (or watch YouTube videos).

Third, don’t be stingy on using flux.

[Lscott]

53 minutes ago, hxpx said:

but the few attempts I've made to fix small electronics usually ends up with the magic smoke escaping from the circuit boards.

Look for these on Amazon. They really help when you make a boo-boo.

[WRYZ926]

A good Weller or Hako soldering station with adjustable heat and different size tips is a must. I use the smallest tips possible with the heat turned up when soldering tiny wires to tiny solder pads and tiny components. I want to get the pads/wires/components up to temp quickly without heating up surrounding components or solder joints.