Ham License Examination

Before we left on our tour I took measures to prepare for some radio ham license examinations scheduled for today, 6 April.  To that end I had made firm bookings for the ferry trip across the Sea of Cortes back to La Paz on 4 April, two days before the examinations, just in case something went wrong with the ferry (which it did!)

I got greedy and decided to go for both the "technical" and the higher "general" certificates.  I downloaded study guides for the two examinations onto my Acer webtop as PDF files.  During the tour I managed to go over the dry material over and over whenever I got a chance, usually on a bouncing bus and later a bit on the train.  A couple of times I grabbed an hour of study while Brenda was out bird watching. 

The work paid off because this morning I took the tests and passed them both.  I don't know the scores but one of the markers said "good work" regarding the test for the General certificate.  I had to memorize things like "The mixer is the receiver stage that combines a 14.250 MHz input signal with a 13.795 MHz oscillator signal to produce a 455 KHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal." (An question on today's test.)  Or how about "The approximate maximum theoretical forward gain of a 3 Element Yagi antenna is 9.7 dBi", another of today's questions.  However, I did manage to learn a lot about all aspects of radio work, which was supposed to be the goal of it all.

Anyway, I am a true Ham now and expect to receive my new call sign after the papers are processed by the US FCC.