Na de succesvolle velddagen in Bellevaux is de VRZA Zuid-Limburg in 2018 verhuisd naar Dairomont, vlakbij Malmédy. Een uurtje rijden vanuit Maastricht ligt dit vakantiehuis bovenop een plateau met een prachtig uitzicht over de omgeving, zoals je op de foto kunt zien.
De velddag vindt in 2019 plaats vanaf donderdag 30 mei (Hemelvaartsdag) tot en met zondag 2 juni. Tijdens deze dagen zullen 8 leden van de VRZA hun kamp opslaan en met diverse antennes en transceivers proberen zoveel mogelijk verbindingen te maken en experimenten te doen.
Net als vorig jaar zullen er een aantal antennes worden opgesteld voor de gebruikelijke HF banden en natuurlijk 2m en 70cm. Op die laatste band staat ON0TB altijd standby op 439.0125 MHz. De repeater PI3ZLB is vanuit Dairomont waarschijnlijk niet bereikbaar…
Zo laat in mei de velddag houden betekent een grotere kans op mooi en warm weer (check het weerbericht hier), een grotere kans op condities en daar zal gebruik van worden gemaakt! Diverse transceivers (én receivers) staan bijna volcontinue te snorren. Kortom: genoeg activiteit op de radio!
De velddag is natuurlijk ook door anderen te bezoeken. Hou er wel rekening mee dat er voor de maaltijden niet is gerekend op mee-eters dus zorg zelf voor eigen eten, indien nodig. Er zijn supermarkten genoeg in de buurt voor ad-hoc voedselvoorzieningen. Voor de consumpties wordt een bijdrage gevraagd. Wil je langs komen? Van harte welkom! Meld je even in via de repeater van Botrange: 439.0125 MHz (shift -7.6MHz), die staat continu aan tijdens de velddag. Nog beter: meld je vooraf aan tijdens een van de clubavonden en spreek af wanneer je komt zodat er rekening met je kan worden gehouden.
Parkeren in de buurt is geen probleem maar hou er rekening mee dat dit huisje in een gewoon dorp ligt dus hou rekening met omwonenden. De locatie is gewoon met de auto of motor te bereiken, je hoeft nu eens niet door het bos!
So far in this series, we’ve covered the absolute basics of getting on the air as a radio amateur – getting licensed, and getting a transceiver. Both have been very low-cost exercises, at least in terms of wallet impact. Passing the test is only a matter of spending the time to study and perhaps shelling out a nominal fee, and a handy-talkie transceiver for the 2-meter and 70-centimeter ham bands can be had for well under $50. If you’re playing along at home, you haven’t really invested much yet.
The total won’t go up much this week, if at all. This time we’re going to talk about what to actually do with your new privileges. The first step for most Technician-class amateur radio operators is checking out the local repeaters, most of which are set up exactly for the bands that Techs have access to. We’ll cover what exactly repeaters are, what they’re used for, and how to go about keying up for the first time to talk to your fellow hams.
Time to face some cold, hard facts about amateur radio: that spiffy new Baofeng radio I recommended last time as a great starter radio is actually pretty lame. That fact has little to do with the mere $25 you spent on it, or $40 if you opted to upgrade the antenna. It’s a simple consequence of physics: a radio that transmits at 5 watts will only have so much range on the VHF band, and even less on UHF. Even if you buy a more powerful HT, or invest in a mobile or base-station rig running 50 or 100 watts, the plain fact is that direct radio-to-radio contacts on the same frequency, or simplex contacts, are difficult on VHF and UHF because those bands are really best for line of sight (LOS) use.
That’s not to say that hams don’t use their VHF and UHF rigs for simplex communications, of course. Many hams like to see just how far they can push their signals on these bands, building big Yagi antennas and finding mountain peaks to operate from. But for general use around town, most hams rely on repeaters to extend the area they can communicate over. Repeaters are simply transceivers set up to receive signals on one frequency and transmit them on another at the same time, with the help of a device called a duplexer. This simultaneous reception and transmission gives rise to the term duplex communications, the general term for operating on a repeater.
Repeater usually transmit at a much higher power than an HT or even a mobile rig can manage, and they usually have the advantage of being located on a mountaintop or some other elevated place to gain the furthest possible radio horizon as possible. This arrangement vastly increases the area that you can cover with your tiny HT. Depending on how the repeater is sited and what sort of antenna it has, you may be able to cover hundreds of square miles, as opposed to perhaps a few miles radius under ideal conditions, or a few blocks in the typical urban or suburban setting with lots of clutter from buildings and trees. What’s more, some repeaters are linked to other repeaters either through backhaul connections, often via the Internet but also sometimes through powerful LOS microwave links. In these systems it’s possible to use a puny HT to talk to another ham over hundreds or even thousands of miles. It’s actually pretty cool.
Welcome to the Machine
So where are these repeaters, and how do you start working them? The first question is easy to answer: they’re everywhere. Look at any tall building, mountaintop antenna farm, or municipal water tank, and chances are pretty good there’s a ham repeater there. But being able to work them means you need to know exactly where they are, to be sure you’re in range of the repeater, or “the machine” as hams often refer to it, as well as the frequencies it operates on.
Luckily, there are online guides to help with that chore. RepeaterBook.com is usually the first place hams go to find machines in the area. There you can search by state, county, or city, or even via a map, and find what repeaters are available. They’ve even got a handy road search, so you can get all the repeaters listed as within range of a particular highway; that’s really handy for road-trip planning. Here’s what comes up for VHF and UHF repeaters when I search within 25 miles of my location, or QTH:
The first thing you’ll notice is that several machines at different sites have the same callsign. For example, K7ID runs a UHF repeater on Canfield Mountain and a VHF machine on Mica Peak. Both are LOS to me, and I can easily hit them with an HT. The frequency listed in the first column is the transmit frequency of the repeater. Your HT will need to be set to this frequency to hear what’s being said. Your radio will also need to be programmed for the correct tone, listed in the third column. That tone is an audio frequency signal known by a number of different trade names, but generically as continuous tone-coded squelch system (CTCSS). Your radio is capable of adding this sub-audible tone to your transmission; the repeater will only “open up” to transmissions that are correctly coded. Some repeaters have no tone coding, others have different tones for receive and transmit. When doubt, try to find out who runs the machine – most, but not all, are run by a ham radio club – and see if you can look up instructions on the web.
The offset shown in the second column is perhaps the most important bit of information. Recall that repeaters transmit and receive on different frequencies, and that they’re listed by their transmit frequency. The offset tells you what the repeater’s input frequency is, which is the frequency your radio will need to be set to transmit on. For example, the machine I most often used is the K7ID machine on Mica Peak. It’s at 146.980 and shows an offset of -0.6 MHz. That means that my radio has to be set to 146.380 MHz transmission frequency. VHF repeaters are usually 0.6 MHz, but could be plus or minus depending on which part of the VHF band they’re in. UHF repeaters usually have +5 MHz offsets.
Note: I’m not going to cover programming your radio, because there are plenty of guides online that do a better job than I can. DuckDuckGo is your friend.
Casting the Net
Once you’ve found your local repeaters and programmed your radio, it’s time to get on the air. My advice is to spend the first few days just listening to one or more repeaters. Activity levels vary – some machines are hopping all day, and some are barely used except during the typical commuting hours. When you hear a conversation, try to get a feeling for the culture of the repeater. Every group of hams has a culture, and as we discussed in the first installment of the series, it’s not always a healthy culture. My local repeater belongs to the Kootenai Amateur Radio Society, as friendly and as inviting a group of people as I’ve ever heard on the air. After listening to them chat for a few weeks, I was more than ready to reach out to them.
But first, a word about kerchunking. If you want to know if you’re in range of a repeater, you can test it out. Most repeaters have a “squelch tail” that keeps the repeater on the air for several seconds before going back to sleep, and this can be used to check if you’re in range. Some repeaters even identify themselves, either with a synthesized voice or Morse code when they “wake up”. So you might want to ping the repeater.
Kerchunking, or transmitting into a repeater without identifying yourself, is one of those bad habits that everyone seems to have. But FCC part 97 rules, which cover the amateur radio service, require operators to transmit their call sign when they start a transmission. So don’t kerchunk; a simple identification like “This is KC1DJT testing and clear” will suffice. Nobody is likely to take that as an invitation to chat, but they might give you a reception report.
Once you’re feeling confident enough, try making a contact. I highly recommend checking out the local traffic networks. Hams pride themselves on having the skills and equipment to communicate in an emergency, but that means little without practice to keep everything sharp. Nets allow hams to practice message passing skills and to test their gear on a regular basis. My local group has a network check-in every night that follows a standard script and usually attracts about 30 check-ins. Here’s a sample from a recent check-in:
I’ve become a regular on this net and a few others, mainly because I want to practice, but also to get over my mic shyness. There’s another reason too – I want people to recognize my voice and callsign. If there ever is an emergency in my area, I feel like it’ll be easier to pitch in or to get help if I need it if people hear a familiar voice.
Next Time
Over the next few installments, we’re finally going to get to what I think ham radio is all about at its core: homebrewing. We’ll be building a few simple projects to make that cheap HT a little better, and also build a few tools to help run the shack a little more efficiently.
Op 11 mei is het Nationale Molendag, een dag waarop je verschillende molens in Nederland kunt bezoeken en kunt zien hoe vroeger – en ook nu nog – molens werk verzetten.
De VRZA Zuid-Limburg is die dag aanwezig bij de Tienhovenmolen in Bemelen (klik voor details) om met het station PA6TIEN mee te doen aan Mills On The Air 2019. Daarbij zijn diverse stations in binnen- en buitenland actief op diverse banden om verbindingen te maken met elkaar en natuurlijk met radiozendamateurs over de hele wereld.
PA6TIEN zal actief zijn op 40m en 2m en natuurlijk ook op andere banden, afhankelijk van condities. Het station zal actief zijn tussen +/- 11:00 en 17:00 uur.
Tijdens het bezoek van de molen is er natuurlijk ook gelegenheid om te komen kijken bij het radiostation.
Tijdens de gezamenlijke lezing in februari is aangekondigd dat er in de week van 6 mei een oefening wordt gehouden in Zuid Limburg. Als zendamateurs zijn we benaderd met de vraag om op onze banden wat activiteit te maken die kan worden verwerkt in de oefening. Inmiddels begint het programma wat meer vorm te krijgen. De belangrijkste punten voor ons zijn:
Tussen maandag 6 mei circa 15 uur en dinsdag middag ca 15 uur:
afwisselend een aantal korte rondes en mini contest met
verschillende digitale modes, en op rustiger momenten baken
uitzendingen
woensdag 7 mei test met reflectie van zendsignalen tegen
gebouwen
Wat heb je hiervoor nodig?
Een vaste, portable of mobiele locatie van waaruit je het gebied Maastricht – Margraten kan bereiken op VHF/UHF
Zendontvanger op 2m en/of 70 cm met bij voorkeur FM en SSB, plus interface voor digitale modes
PC met software voor digitale modes: FLdigi, WSJT-X (versie 2), MixW (versie 3).
packet, APRS
De opzet is zodanig dat je voor kortere of langere tijd kan deelnemen, aan een of meerdere onderdelen.
Een deel van de informatie zal ook op de website a22.veron.nl worden gepubliceerd. Een ander deel met de details van de oefening is alleen bedoeld voor de deelnemers.
Wil je en kan je voor een deel of het geheel deelnemen, meldt je dan aan bij Tom PC5D@home.nl
Tube Time @TubeTimeUS
March 31, 2019
Take a look at these fascinating and educational cross sections
of an LED, resistor, diode, capacitor, and more. (The images in this
Moment created by TubeTimeUS are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
here’s a cross section of an LED! it still works too.
20 replies
330 retweets
1,317 likes
LED cross section — now with annotations!
here’s a cross section of a resistor!
and here it is with labels on the important bits. you can see part of the spiral gouge left by the trimming equipment. during manufacture, this machine removes carbon film, increasing the resistance until it hits the target value.
compare that with this old-school carbon composition resistor. it’s just carbon powder inside a phenolic tube.
this carbon composition resistor has a value of 7.5 ohms. doesn’t take much carbon to get that resistance!
here’s the cross section of a diode! it’s a 1N4007. you can see the piece of silicon in the middle. the lumps on the wires help hold them in the plastic case.
here’s a cross section of a surface mount ceramic chip capacitor.
here’s the annotated version. i’ve drawn in lines over 4 of the capacitor plates near the bottom to make them a bit more clear.
cross section of a film capacitor.
cross section of a ceramic disc capacitor. you can see the ceramic disc right across the center.
check out this cross section of an inductor!
annotated version of the inductor cross section.
annotated cross section of a film capacitor.
cross section of an electrolytic capacitor! i’ll annotate it shortly.
adjusted the annotations to correct a mistake. the paper in between the layers of foil is not actually the dielectric! when soaked in electrolyte, it serves as the cathode (‘-‘ terminal). the dielectric is an oxide layer grown on the anode (‘+’ terminal).
top view cross section of an electrolytic capacitor.
Here’s a version with each plate colored in to make it easier to trace how they’re wrapped around each other.
here’s the cross section of a dipped tantalum capacitor.
annotated cross section.
cross section of a 15-turn potentiometer
close-up of the slider. this part moves left and right as you turn the adjustment screws.
annotated version of the 15-turn trimmer potentiometer cross section.
have a look at this cross section of a tact switch!
annotated diagram of a tact switch cross section. in the photo, the button is pushed down and the dome is shorting the center contact to the outside contacts. when you let go, the metal dome snaps up, making a tiny click and breaking the circuit.
ok this is the cross section of a 2N3904 NPN transistor. what’s that tiny little speck?
it’s the transistor silicon die! the little gold dollop on top is the emitter bond wire! the big metal slug underneath is the collector terminal.
annotated version of 2N3904 NPN transistor cross section.
here’s a cutaway view of a classic 12AX7 vacuum tube triode. discriminating musicians use these tubes in their guitar amplifiers — you’ve definitely heard the sound before!
this is the annotated cutaway diagram of the 12AX7 vacuum tube.
in the middle of this photo, you can see the coated filament wires entering the hollow cathode. the filament heats up the cathode. this produces an aura of electrons called the “space charge” region.
how about a closeup of the grid wires and the cathode? the white powder is oxides of barium, strontium, and calcium, which improves electron emission. the control grid, if biased negative, repels the electrons, caging them up. otherwise they pass through the grid to the plate.
here’s a cross section of an Ethernet transformer. inside a network adapter, there is one of these in between the Ethernet PHY chip and the cable, providing isolation and safety.
here’s the side view cross section of an Ethernet transformer.
annotated version of the Ethernet transformer cross section.
ok don’t try this one at home: this is a cross section of an LR44 alkaline button cell!
annotated cross section of the LR44 alkaline button cell.
There used to be a time when amateur radio was a fairly
static pursuit. There was a lot of fascination to be had with building
radios, but what you did with them remained constant year on year. Morse
code was sent by hand with a key, voice was on FM or SSB with a few
old-timers using AM, and you’d hear the warbling tones of RTTY traffic
generated by mechanical teletypes.
By contrast the radio amateur of today lives in a fast-paced world of
ever-evolving digital modes, in which much of the excitement comes in
pushing the boundaries of what is possible when a radio is connected to a
computer. A new contender in one part of the hobby has come our way
from [Guillaume, F4HDK], in the form of his NPR, or New Packet Radio mode.
NPR is intended to bring high bandwidth IP networking to radio
amateurs in the 70 cm band, and it does this rather cleverly with a
modem that contains a single-chip FSK transceiver intended for use in
licence-free ISM band applications. There is an Ethernet module and an
Mbed microcontroller board on a custom PCB, which when assembled
produces a few hundred milliwatts of RF that can be fed to an
off-the-shelf DMR power amplifier.
Each network is configured around a master node intended to use an
omnidirectional antenna, to which individual nodes connect.
Time-division multiplexing is enforced by the master so there should be
no collisions, and this coupled with the relatively wide radio bandwidth
of the ISM transceiver gives the system a high usable data bandwidth.
Whether or not the mode is taken up and becomes a success depends
upon the will of individual radio amateurs. But it does hold the
interesting feature of relying upon relatively inexpensive parts, so the
barrier to entry is lower than it might be otherwise. If you are
wondering where you might have seen [F4HDK] before, we’ve previously
brought you his FPGA computer.
There are a few options if you want to network computers on
amateur radio. There are WiFi hacks of sort, and of course there’s
always packet radio. New Packet Radio,
a project from [f4hdk] that’s now on hackaday.io, is unlike anything
we’ve seen before. It’s a modem that’s ready to go, uses standard 433
ISM band chips, should only cost $80 to build, and it supports
bidirectional IP traffic.
The introductory documentation for this project
(PDF) lays out the use case, protocol, and hardware for NPR. It’s based
on chips designed for the 433MHz ISM band, specifically the SI4463 ISM
band radio from Silicon Labs. Off the shelf amplifiers are used, and the
rest of the modem consists of an Mbed Nucleo and a Wiznet W5500
Ethernet module. There is one single modem type for masters and clients.
The network is designed so that a master serves as a bridge between Hamnet,
a high-speed mesh network that can connect to the wider Internet. This
master connects to up to seven clients simultaneously. Alternatively,
there is a point-to-point configuration that allows two clients to
connect to each other at about 200 kbps.
Being a 434 MHz device, this just isn’t going to fly in the US, but
the relevant chip will work with the 915 MHz ISM band. This is a great
solution to IP over radio, and like a number of popular amateur radio
projects, it started with the hardware hackers first.
In the radio business, getting the high ground is key to
covering as much territory from as few installations as possible.
Anything that has a high profile, from a big municipal water tank to a
roadside billboard to a remote hilltop, will likely be bristling with
antennas, and different services compete for the best spots to locate
their antennas. Amateur radio clubs will be there too, looking for space
to locate their repeaters, which allow hams to use low-power mobile and
handheld radios to make contact over a vastly greater range than they
could otherwise.
Now some hams have claimed the highest of high ground for their
repeater: space. For the first time, an amateur radio repeater has gone
to space aboard a geosynchronous satellite, giving hams the ability to
link up over a third of the globe. It’s a huge development, and while it
takes some effort to use this new space-based radio, it’s a game
changer in the amateur radio community.
Friends in High Places
The new satellite, Es’hail-2,
was built for Es’hailSat, a Qatari telecommunications concern. As
satellites go, it’s a pretty standard machine, built primarily to
provide direct digital TV service to the Middle East and Africa. But
interestingly, it was designed from the start to carry an amateur radio
payload. The request for proposals
(RFP) that Es’hailSat sent to potential vendors in early 2014
specifically called for the inclusion of an amateur repeater, to be
developed jointly by AMSAT, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation.
The repeater aboard Es’hail-2 was developed as a joint effort between the Qatar Amateur Radio Society (QARS), Es’HailSat, and AMSAT-DL,
the AMSAT group in Germany. The willingness of Es’HailSat to include an
amateur radio payload on a commercial bird might be partially explained
by the fact that the QARS chairman is His Excellency Abdullah bin Hamad
Al Attiyah (A71AU), former Deputy Prime Minister of Qatar.
The repeater was engineered with two main services in mind. The first
is a narrowband transponder intended for phone (voice) contacts,
continuous wave (CW) for Morse contacts, and some of the narrow
bandwidth digital modes, like PSK-31. The other transponder is for
wideband use, intended to test Digital Amateur Television (DATV). The
wideband transponder can carry two simultaneous HD signals and a beacon
broadcasting video content from QARS. Both transponders uplink on the
portion of the 2.4-GHz reserved for hams, while downlinking on the
10.4-GHz band.
Es’hail-2 was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape
Canaveral on November 15, 2018. The satellite was boosted to a
geosynchronous orbit in the crowded slot located at 26.5° East
longitude, parking it directly above the Democratic Republic of Congo.
After tests were completed, a ceremony inaugurating the satellite as
“Qatar OSCAR-100”, or QO-100, was held on February 14, 2019, making it
the 100th OSCAR satellite launched by amateurs.
Listening In
Sadly for hams in the Americas and most of eastern Asia, QO-100 is
out of range. But for hams anywhere from coastal Brazil to Thailand, the
satellite is visible 24 hours a day. The equipment to use it can be a
bit daunting, if the experience of this amateur radio club in Norway
is any indication. They used a 3-meter dish for the 2.4-GHz uplink,
along with a string of homebrew hardware and a lot of determination to
pull off their one contact so far, and this from a team used to bouncing
signals off the Moon.
Receiving signals from QO-100 is considerably easier. A dish in the
60-cm to 1-meter range will suffice, depending on location, with a
decent LNB downconverter. Pretty much any SDR will do for a receiver. An
alternative to assembling the hardware yourself — and the only way to
get in on the fun for the two-thirds of the planet not covered by the
satellite — would be to tune into one of the WebSDR ground stations that
have been set up. The British Amateur Television Club and AMSAT-UK,
located at the Goonhilly Earth Station, have set up an SDR for the narrowband transponder that you can control over the web. I used it to listen in on a number of contacts between hams the other night.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of QO-100. It’s the first ham
repeater in geosynchronous orbit, as well as the first DATV transponder
in space. It’s quite an achievement, and the skills it will allow hams
to develop as they work this bird will inform the design of the next
generation of ham satellites. Hats off to everyone who was involved in
getting QO-100 flying!
Op 6 april om middernacht wordt het weeknummer van de GPS-tijd gereset. Hierdoor kan apparatuur die gebruik maakt van het GPS-systeem mogelijk niet meer goed functioneren. Controleer daarom of bijvoorbeeld uw navigatiesysteem op 7 april nog goed werkt.
Achtergrond GPS-tijd
De GPS-tijd wordt afgeleid uit twee tellers, de
seconden- en de weekteller. De secondenteller houdt het aantal seconden
bij sinds de start van de week. Een week begint daarbij om middernacht
in de nacht van zaterdag op zondag. Daarnaast is er de weekteller. Deze
teller houdt simpelweg bij hoeveel weken er zijn verlopen sinds de start
van de telling. Beide tellers zijn gestart om middernacht op 5 januari
1980. Vanwege het simpele feit dat de weekteller wordt bijgehouden in
een getal van 10 bits, kan slechts tot 1023 geteld worden. Daarna
springt te weekteller weer op 0 (een reset). Dat gebeurt dus op 6 april
om middernacht.
De meeste moderne apparatuur heeft geen last van
deze reset. Raadpleeg bij twijfel de website van de fabrikant van uw
apparatuur. Mogelijk is er een software-update nodig.
Today we start a new series dedicated to amateur radio for
cheapskates. Ham radio has a reputation as a “rich old guy” hobby, a
reputation that it probably deserves to some degree. Pick up a glossy
catalog from DX Engineering or cruise their website, and you’ll see that
getting into the latest and greatest gear is not an exercise for the
financially challenged. And thus the image persists of the recent
retiree, long past the expense and time required to raise a family and
suddenly with time on his hands, gleefully adding just one more piece of
expensive gear to an already well-appointed ham shack to “chew the rag”
with his “OMs”.
As I pointed out a few years back in “My Beef With Ham Radio”,
I’m an inactive ham. My main reason for not practicing is that I’m not a
fan of talking to strangers, but there’s a financial component to my
reticence as well – it’s hard to spend a lot of money on gear when you
don’t have a lot to talk about. I suspect that there are a lot of
would-be hams out there who are turned off from the hobby by its
perceived expense, and perhaps a few like me who are on the mic-shy
side.
This series is aimed at dispelling the myth that one needs buckets of
money to be a ham, and that jawboning is the only thing one does on the
air. Each installment will feature a project that will move you further
along your ham journey that can be completed for no more than $50 or
so. Wherever possible, I’ll be building the project or testing the
activity myself so I can pursue my own goal of actually using my license
for a change.
(A shout-out to Robert for suggesting this series, and for graciously allowing me to run with his idea.)
Getting Your Ticket
The licensing of amateur radio stations in the United States goes all
the way back to 1912. (I’m concentrating on US laws and customs
regarding the amateur radio service simply because that’s where I live;
please feel free to chip in on the comments section about differences in
other countries.) Anyone who wants to operate on the bands reserved for
the amateur radio service has to be licensed by the Federal
Communication Commission. Unlicensed individuals are free – and
encouraged – to listen in on the bands, but if you don’t have a license,
you can’t transmit. And trust me, the local hams, with know-how,
equipment, and all the time in the world, will find you, resulting in an
unpleasant encounter with the FCC.
There’s really no reason not to get a license anyway. This will be
among the cheapest parts of a ham’s journey, and perhaps even free. To
earn a license you’ll need to pass a written exam, but before taking the
plunge you’ll need to know a little about the classes of amateur radio
licenses, and the privileges they bestow.
The current entry-level license class in the US is called Technician
class; the old Novice class was eliminated in 2000, along with the Morse
code requirement for all classes. Technicians have privileges to
operate mainly on the upper frequencies, primarily on the 2-meter (144
MHz) and 70-cm (420 MHz) bands in phone mode, which means voice
transmissions. Technicians also have access to small slices of the
10-meter band using data modes, and small sections of 15-, 40-, and
80-meters if they learn Morse or use a computer to send and receive it.
This limits the Technician to mainly local communications, but there’s
plenty to do and loads to learn on these bands.
The
band plan for US hams. Note that Technicians only have phone (voice)
privileges on 10 meters and below; the long haul bands are off limits
unless you use Morse. Source: ARRL.org
Practice, Practice, Practice
Even with all the limitations, a Technician license still offers
access to a lot of spectrum and serves as the gateway to the next two
classes, General and Extra. Everyone has to start with a Technician
license, which requires passing a 35-question multiple choice
examination. The exam is standardized with questions selected from a fixed pool, with topics ranging from knowing FCC Part 97 rules
to basic electronics and RF theory. The exam is pretty easy, especially
for anyone with a background in electronics. In fact, many complete
newbies come to exam sessions after having run through enough online
practice tests to see every possible pool question and pass the exam
without understanding a thing about radios or electronics. There are
lively debates over whether that’s a good thing or not – personally, I’m
not a fan of it – but it is what it is; the Technician exam is dead
easy.
Your investment in a Technician license will be minimal, and mostly
consists of the time it takes to study. Online practice tests – I
recommend the tests on QRZ.com
– are free to take as many times as you need to. Some ham clubs offer
local classes aimed at helping you to prepare, and those generally
charge only a nominal fee. There are even one-day intensive “ham cram” sessions where you’re guided through all the material and take the exam at the end of the day.
Exam sessions are run by Volunteer Exam Coordinators (VECs)
Volunteer Examiners (VEs), hams who have special training in
administering and grading exams. They too charge only a nominal fee – I
think I paid $15 – and may even waive the fee under certain
circumstances. There are also occasional special events like the annual Field Day, where hams set up tents and booths in public places as an outreach to the public, where exams are often administered for free.
Honestly, getting your Technician license is about as low impact as
the amateur radio hobby gets. Once you can consistently pass practice
tests online, the actual exam is a breeze. Exams are graded on the spot
so you’ll know instantly how you did, and you can even take the next
exam for no extra charge if you’re ready. Give it a shot even if you
haven’t studied – I nearly passed my Extra exam going in cold after I
aced my General.
Next Time
In the next installment I’ll start discussing what the newly minted
Technician can do with his or her license. It may seem like a pipe dream
to get on the air for less than $50, but it’s surprising what’s
available these days, and you’ll find that fifty dollars can go a long
way toward making your first contact.
Net als vorig jaar zullen er een aantal antennes worden opgesteld voor de gebruikelijke HF banden en natuurlijk 2m en 70cm. Op die laatste band staat ON0TB altijd standby op 439.0125 MHz. De repeater PI3ZLB is vanuit Dairomont waarschijnlijk niet bereikbaar…
De velddag is natuurlijk ook door anderen te bezoeken. Hou er wel rekening mee dat er voor de maaltijden niet is gerekend op mee-eters dus zorg zelf voor eigen eten, indien nodig. Er zijn supermarkten genoeg in de buurt voor ad-hoc voedselvoorzieningen. Voor de consumpties wordt een bijdrage gevraagd. Wil je langs komen? Van harte welkom! Meld je even in via de repeater van Botrange: 439.0125 MHz (shift -7.6MHz), die staat continu aan tijdens de velddag. Nog beter: meld je vooraf aan tijdens een van de clubavonden en spreek af wanneer je komt zodat er rekening met je kan worden gehouden.
