Got my “Extra”
April 30, 2006
Well, I got my “advanced extra” ham radio license today. It was quite an adventure involving broken down trucks and a few other mishapes, but the testers were troopers and got me tested! Now I just need to get my antenna up to snuff so I can transmit!
All that said - I’m really glad to have that morse code exam done. Of course, I’m going to go back and learn the whole thing over again at a faster speed. Hopefully, it won’t be quite so bad as starting from scratch since I at least of a bit of an association with all the letters, numbers, etc.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:32 am
Congatulations again Paul.
You went from no license to Extra class in about a month! Not too many people can do that. I think it took me about a decade.
You were asking about ARRL VE Certification. The link to the info is this:
http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/become-a-ve.html
Go there, read the manual, fill out the open book test, mail or fax / mail your test to the ARRL, and that is it. A couple of weeks later, you will have the badge, and be good to go.
If you want to work with us, once or twice to get the hang of it, just let us know. Hopefully there will be less chaos in the future, than you had to deal with yesterday!
73,
N9OQT
Patrick Twigg
Urbana, IL
May 1st, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Go from nothing to Extra was, in large part, due to the help of this website:
http://www.aa9pw.com/radio/
It provides excellent practice exams for both the written elements and the morse code. I found the morse code exam to be the most help. Using tapes or other pre-recorded material, I was finding that I already new what was coming and wasn’t really listening to the code. Being randomly generated, the practice QSO’s on that website really helped me pay attention and listen.
Of course, I’m going back and re-learning morse code at 20 WPM!