HAM Radio exam

[ECarlson]

Do any of your local ham clubs have licensing classes? That's how I got re-involved in radio communications about a year and a half ago, after being away from it for a couple decades.

I attended a weekend Technician-class licensing class at a local amateur radio club (the class was free). Since I had a couple weeks to study before the licensing exam, and I only needed to do a tiny bit of additional studying for the Technician-class license, I did some extra studying for the General-class and the Extra-class licenses, and when exam day came, I took the tests for all 3 levels and got my Extra-class license.

The online license test sites were very helpful (at least in the US), and there are some online licensing guides, though there is a brand new set of questions for the Technician-class license in the US, so make sure you study the right questions.

There is a lot more to amateur radio than just Morse code and voice communication. There are dozens of digital modes, both data modes and voice modes, and all you need to use many of them, in addition to your radio, is a computer with a sound card.

The digital modes are fun to explore even if you only have a short-wave receiver. All you have to do is connect the radio's audio output into your sound card's input, then use any of dozens of programs (many free) to decode the digital modes.

Another very interesting area of Amateur Radio is Software Defined Radio (Google it for info), where much of the radio's functionality is provided by your computer (www.flex-radio.com is one good example, though there are others, and kits are available too).

And there are many other aspects of amateur radio that I haven't mentioned (and probably many aspects I haven't even learned about yet).