My first Antenna

With the impending completion of my rxtx board I've been thinking about an antenna. I posted on the ham mailing list at work and got some good advice on what band to look at (30m) and what to do about an antenna. With this info I headed on over to the local Radio Ham Outlet and begged for more help. With their advice I got a RadioWavz 20dp11 20m Dipole, 50m RG8X coax, PL-259 connector for the radio, 300ft UV resistant nylon rope and a Dummy Load. It was a lot of small costs that ended up total ing $180. Quite a bit more than I really wanted to spend, but it all looked like good stuff and I was giving my radio it's best opportunity to pick up some signals and hopefully have something to listen to. I plan to enlist the help of my parents while they're here to help me hang this in the redwood trees behind my house.

While soliciting advice at work and at the Ham Outlet I was encouraged to get an antenna analyzer ($300) and the idea of a multi-band dipole seemed interesting, but alas, that would need a tuner too which would be another $150 to $300. All these amounts are way out of my budget right now. I'm still only playing with this stuff.

Softrock RXTX 6.3 ordered

You remember in that last post how I said I had no intention of getting a radio that would let me use my new band privileges? Well the biggest hurdle was time and the cost of another radio. Luckily while reading QST (or it could have been Radcom (thanks G4HON)), I stumbled across the Softrock project and their RXTX 6.3 board. It was cheap and low power and I could build it myself and the instructions looked really good. So with a co-worker I ordered two kits with full band pass filters since no one on the email list at work would tell me what would be the best bands to try. Total cost around $120 which is well within the playing around with things budget. Our plan is to work on it two hours a week after our team meeting in the electronics lab at work. I've never had much success with building electronics, let's hope this one is different.

General Class License

Hey, check it out, I just passed my General Class radio ham exam! Just like last time, the test popped up too quickly for me to study properly so I've been cramming the 484 multiple choice questions in the question pool for the last week and it went pretty well. I think I got 30 out of 35 right (I needed at least 26). I had been practicing on my iPhone using AA9PW's online practice exams and it had been going pretty well. It was a surprise to note that the answers weren't in the same order in the real exam as they are online. I also took the Extra Class exam, but I hadn't studied for that at all and failed miserably with a 25 out of 50.

I still have no idea why I took the test. With the new license I can operate at different frequencies that can travel further, but I don't have a radio that can transmit at those frequencies and I don't plan on getting one. I have enjoyed learning all the stuff though. I already bought the Extra Class book so I guess at some point I'll try and pass that, but not this year. I have until 2011 when the question pool will change and my current book will be out of date. Extra is as high as it goes. It's like being a frickin' black belt in radio geekery. Bad Ass!