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description= Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;
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rage amateur radio contests and classwork and they have their own series of publications for and about amateur radio like my study book from part 1 the arrl does have their detractors and holy crap are those people vocal about it but the arrl is also the best voice that amateur radio has in the us maybe it s because my mind works the same way as the webmasters who designed the arrl s website i quickly found a free class available beginning in september and lasting through october i quickly emailed the contact person who confirmed that yes they still have openings and i could just show up at the bright early time of 9 am on saturday morning at the red cross building here in cincinnati if you ever wondered whether ham radio and mmo hobbies are similar yes they are from imgflip and sp3pow the night before that first class i tossed and turned in bed finally getting to sleep after 1 am it had been at least 24 years since i last had an in person class and i wasn t sure what to expect would i be the oldest person there would there be a crowd what sort of people would the students be the instructors would i have issues even getting inside the building the answer to that last question thankfully was no there were two people monitoring the front door and i didn t get harangued any more than necessary once i explained i was there for the ham radio class i followed their directions to the correct room and i discovered that much to my surprise i was one of the youngest people in the class from memeguy there were seven people in the class myself included and three instructors i soon learned that the instructors viewed the class as something closer to providing guidance while we learned the material for the entry level license the technician class they admitted that we really didn t need them to learn the material as the arrl books were fine for learning the material but they were there to provide some hands on learning about amateur radio as well as answer questions i could see that despite the class being free that some people would drop the class after realizing that they could just study by themselves and take the test and to be fair one did but once i got over the initial disconnect between my expectations and the reality i warmed up to the class part of it was seeing the equipment up close and personal which to a gearhead like me i found fascinating but i think another part of it was that the instructors were uniformly upbeat about our chances of passing the exam as long as you study take practice tests online and keep up with it they said numerous times you ll pass while the arrl had its own practice test website and i did take those practice tests while i studied i spent a lot more time on hamstudy org this place became my friend this is as of november 8 2025 i could take tests and study by being quizzed on all of the exam questions to my heart s content that s one nice thing about the amateur radio license exams in the us all of the questions are taken from pools of 400 technician 450 general and 622 amateur extra questions for each license class respectively since those are already known you could theoretically study for the test by simply memorizing the questions of course that doesn t really teach you anything other than how to pass the exam but it could be done when i started taking the practice tests for the technician exam i realized i had my work cut out for me i had to get 74 of the questions correct on the exam so that meant 26 out of 35 for the tech license and i wasn t even hitting that for somebody who d prided himself on being at least somewhat savvy with radio and electrical circuitry over the years that was tough to accept if i were serious about this i realized i was going to have to buckle down and really study that s mint tea no caffeine i wanted to sleep when i was done studying for the night you know i not only studied at night when i d typically get on wow classic and play for a bit but also whenever i had a break at work and for the astute among you you likely notice that there were not only technician class license books as part of my study regimen above but also general class books because i can t simply do one thing at a time i suppose when i started down this amateur radio classwork i d set a lofty goal for myself to not only get the tech license but the general too while the tech licenses primarily focus on vhf and uhf frequencies when most people think of ham radio myself inclued they think of people operating on the shortwave bands those bands known as high frequency hf in radio nomenclature are between 3 mhz and 30 mhz the tech license gets you access to the entire 10 meter band 28 0 mhz to 29 7 mhz in the us but if you want to talk to people using speech on the rest of the hf amateur radio bands you need a general class license given my longtime interest in shortwave radio it made sense that i d want to do that and of course my own arrogance led me to believe that i could do that easily uh nope that practice result above was pretty much normal for me this was but one of the times when i discovered i not only didn t remember a lot of things the mathematics in particular there were a lot of items i never had to deal with as a shortwave listener that i would encounter as a ham radio operator such as concepts behind transmitters about the only good thing i did when i started taking the class was to not tell anyone that i wanted to pass both the tech and general classes i was putting enough pressure on myself as it was without being an asshole and waving a flag around yelling look at me i m awesome i ve had enough humble pie served to me over the years that i wasn t going to do that at all by mid october i was passing practice tests for the technician class exams with regularity so i shifted my focus to the general class test i had about 2 3 weeks before the license exam of november 1st so it was very much crunch time the stress i was putting myself under was kind of like this from real genius and makeagif at that point i stopped trying to understand all of the material and focused instead on simply passing the test the last week before the exam i admitted to the instructors that i was aiming to pass both technician and general class licenses the instructors were very encouraging saying that i knew the material so i just had to relax and take the exams they also mentioned another little thing when i take the tech exam and pass the exam costs 15 per attempt i get a free attempt at the next higher license exam so theoretically i would only have to pay 15 to take both exams if i passed both on the first try then one of the instructors dropped the bomb you should take the extra class exam too i haven t even looked at those questions yet i admitted while my mind was screaming fuck fuck fuck at me yes but it s free and it gives you an understanding of what it d take to pass that exam i couldn t really say no to a free attempt but i didn t want that to distract me from my immediate goals still that could i do it lingered in the back of my head all week exam day dawned bright and sunny the exam itself was at 9 am but i was already up at 5 30 am yeah i m one of those people who don t sleep well the night before an exam no matter what it is from facebook i was supposed to arrive by 8 45 because the exam coordinators wanted to get started right at 9 but when i did i discovered that the instructors were already there rooting us on one of the class members had taken her exam earlier so she didn t need to show up but she came to cheer us on as well those small things meant a lot because i was really nervous i should be fine i told myself as long as i don t get the exactly wrong question for each part of the exam in each section there s one question that gave me trouble but what were the odds that i d get them all in one randomly selected exam you can guess what happened when i started i looked over the exam and immediately thought holy shit it was a nightmare come to life it had that smile on its face too from theprchiro via cheezburger i took a few deep breaths and calmed myself down it s only 15 i thought to myself i can take it again if i flunk then i started slowly working on the questions i knew i answered all of those questions then started working on all of the ones that i hadn t seen very much or i had trouble with after that i was down to a couple of questions that i just guessed at and then spent another 5 10 minutes just making sure i didn t do anything stupid like selecting the answers in the wrong row i then had to wait another 5 minutes for my turn getting my test graded i passed that was a huge weight off of my shoulders i took a deep breath and inquired about taking the general test in short order i was back at my seat with a new set of questions to work on and this time i relaxed a bit the hard part was over and now it was time to just go for it for some reason i found these questions easier even though i knew i was going to get more wrong than the technician exam i m not sure why but my suspicion is that the pressure i was putting myself under was gone so i found it easier to not dither and simply select answers i finished turned in my exam and soon learned i passed the general exam as well do you want to try for the extra one of the volunteer exam coordinators asked sure let s do this i replied with an enthusiasm i didn t feel i sat down with the highest level exam looked at the first question and i knew the answer hey i thought i can do this then i got to the second question uh nope yeah this from 9gag oh that last exam was brutal positively brutal i knew almost by the 3rd or 4th question that i wasn t going to pass this exam hell i wasn t even going to get 50 of the 50 questions on the extra exam i answered about 15 20 for certain and took a stab at 3 6 more then i just selected a for all the rest there was no penalty for just guessing so why not so another of the exam coordinators asked as i turned in my sheet how d you think you did you know how you re in college and you re in a seminar listening to professors talk about their research and you have absolutely no fucking idea what they re talking about it was like that they all laughed yes this mr bean skit was going through my head while i was taking the extra exam from pinterest and mr bean obviously it turns out that while i did fail i got 20 questions correct they told me i did a great job for going in blind on that extra exam and now i had something to shoot for once i filled out some forms i went out into the waiting area where everybody else was hanging around to see how i did passed the general and bombed the extra i replied i got congratulations from the rest of the students and the instructors and once i d signed a few extra documents we all left the building i d like to say that my journey was just beginning but the reality is that it s kind of on hold right now due to the government shutdown the fcc won t process the paperwork until the government reopens meaning i can t transmit on my own equipment until my license appears in the fcc database so i ve got time to relax a bit and try to figure out what starter radio to purchase before i dive in still four of us in the class have gotten to know each other fairly well and we even met last saturday for lunch the club that sponsored the class and the exam was very welcoming and i think i m going to join that club and see how things go so now you know what i ve been up to for the past couple of months system admin class for hp ux while i knew unix since i coded on silicon graphics workstations back in the 90s the sysadmin side of things was new to me so i was sent off to a couple weeks worth of classwork two dropped but one of them had to drop because work kept them from attending regularly the other simply stopped coming yes i ve done that before posted by redbeard at 6 00 am 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels adventures over the airwaves amateur radio memes self tuesday november 11 2025 a little something to do part 1 last year i began pondering what i was going to do when i retired the semi official retirement age for my generation is 67 when you can get your full benefits from social security so i ve got approximately 11 years left it s a decently far enough way away but not far away enough for me to be wondering what i m going to do when i hang it up obviously the first thing i d do is not much really i already work from home so i don t have a commute to deal with but i am on call 24x7 so okay my work is pretty much integrated into my life even when i have a day off i still check work email and occasionally take care of things because murphy s law is a real bitch if i m not doing that well it ll take some getting used to but i m sure i ll survive when my dad took early retirement at age 55 he wasn t sure what he was going to do either and he annoyed my mom to no end when he was simply there all the time inserting himself into how she had been running things for decades so he eventually decided to volunteer as a second job he became a chaplain for one of the local hospitals which he did until he died i have absolutely no interest in anything vaguely resembling religion so that specific path isn t one for me but that did give me an idea well that and hurricane helene last year originally by jabin botsford via getty images and the washington post found on grist org when the remnants of hurricane helene smashed through the appalachian mountains in the carolinas last year almost all forms of communications were lost cell towers destroyed power lines torn apart you name it the one form of communication that filled in the gap until power and telecommunications were restored was that of amateur radio operators huh i mused it had been a long time since i thought of ham radio seriously at least longer than i d been playing wow so that should give you an idea as to the time frame i m talking about i ve known the occasional ham and i encountered them when i worked at radio shack or obviously when i went up to the dayton hamvention but my last trip to that convention was in 2006 but now watching the news reports about helene and how ham radio provided a vital link to areas that had no communications or power for a couple of weeks or more i realized that was something i could do i have a history of tinkering with electronics and radio in addition to my posts on the subject this one included when i was a kid i had my share of electronics kits from radio shack the later ones had a numeric led but this was the model i had from hackaday this was my first kit no not the real thing but a picture of the model yes it did work but i had to hook up the wire to a water pipe to hear anything from radiomuseum org if i was interested in radio and electronics and i knew some hams why didn t i become a radio amateur back in the day well there were a fe...
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