The next step

While the "bug" is running in me, I had a go at the online advanced exam yesterday, on the radioelectronicsschool website. guess what? I passed that too. I may bone up a bit, and knock that one over while I am feeling adventurous.

I Passed

Well, I passed the regulations exam, now just to wait for the WIA/ACMA to get their gear together and issue the new callsign.
All candidates who sat the regs exam passed incidentally.

Regs and more regs

The last two weeks have been taken with regulations, interference, band usage, power levels, license privileges, Q codes, permissible transmissions, distress calls etc.
Most of the work has been done with the aid of the CD2 from Radio electronic school set.
I am consistently scoring better than 80%, which is a pass. Just do a couple of test exams each night and I should be right. Next Friday night is the regulations exam, that is all that is required for the upgrade now.

WooHoo

I passed the theory exam. Yeah quite pleased with myself! And not one math question. I think I got an easy paper, compared to some of the other questions that fellow candidates were stressing about. Everyone gets a random selection of 50 questions from the pool of available questions. The chance of getting exactly the same questions as another on the night are pretty slim. So I didn't get 100%, but I was pretty close, and as anything over 70% is a pass, I don't think the exact number matters.

So 16th November is the regulations exam, we have 2 weeks to learn them, and then an exam consisting of 30 questions. I am not sure of the pass mark for the regs. I will find out soon I suppose.

At the last minute..

Spent a fruitful hour at the clubrooms today asking last minute questions before the theory exam tomorrow night. Just making sure that my math was in line with the books.

Almost there

just a quick entry this week.
Last week of theory, 50 question exam next week.

We covered measurement, EMC (Electromagnetic compliance), answered general questions

8 of 12

Week 8 has been and gone, with receivers the topic of discussion tonight. Simple crystal set, single stage RF amplifier, audio amplifier etc... Single conversion, double conversion, direct conversion, SSB, CW, FM. How the IF frequency is obtained, why we use it, combinations of local oscillator and received frequency mixing. AGC and de-emphasis in an FM receiver. We finally have the theory test this Friday. This is where it all has to come together. Then regulations and safety.

Week 7

Another week down, transmission lines, antennae, and propagation were on the menu this week. The differences between a balanced feeder , (like open wire feeder, 300 and 450 ohm ribbon) and an unbalanced feeder (coaxial cable), the electromagnetic characteristics of each (and the facilitators preference).
Dipoles, horizontal, vertical, folded, 1/2 a dipole (a vertical antenna with a groundplane as the other side), as well as yagi and log periodic antennae were all discussed, feedpoints, that dreaded SWR, baluns and antenna tuning units.
One little nugget I gleaned, in respect to an OCF dipole (off centre fed) is where you feed it makes a big difference. Basically it is a windom and is traditionally fed 1/3 from one end. The disadvantage of this is that the antenna will not work very well at the 3rd harmonic of it's designed frequency. So an 3.5Mhz antenna fed at 1/3 will be a poor performer on 10.5Mhz etc.... We can't have that. It was suggested that feeding it at 1/5 will take the "useless" frequency about 18Mhz, and I can't use that one anyway. The beauty of wire antenna is that if it does not work, pull it down and build another one!!
Next week recievers!!

On the way home, I had a chat to a fellow amateur about the callsign issue, and he made a few suggestions. VK7LVM is a possibility or another linux based one. I really should have used VK7FSCK for my foundation call, but I was too overcome from passing to really think the callsign bit through.

Anyone reading this, please think of a witty 3 letter suffix, in the range of:
VK7Haa, VK7Laa, VK7Maa, VK7Paa, VK7Vaa, substituting the letters for aa. And VK7HAM is already gone!

Half way there.

Week 6 of the Standard license upgrade course is over, this week we started with a 50 question test of the last 5 weeks work. I was quite happy with my result, more than enough to get a pass. Now we started putting it all together, with transmitters the first cab of the rank. Basic CW, then AM, SSB and finally FM designs, the basic features of each (both positive and negative). Soon I should be starting to think about what callsign I want when I pass. VK7HCH is a strong possibility, I always wanted VK7NBL because to me it spelt No Bloody License. But as the standard syllabus is different from an old novice one, I feel a bit funny about taking an N call as I do not have the 5wpm morse that was needed to get that call originally. I will probably take the H call, being the equivilent of Novice Limited (Novice with no morse).
But I still have to pass the exams, lets not get too cocky.

Now for something completely different...

It is actually an animated gif if you click on it.
I don't know where this started, I found it on ad5jn's site. I love it.

License upgrade week 5

Power supplies and amplifier classes this week. As we had previously covered transformers, we already had our lower voltage to work with. This week we covered rectification, using either a half wave, full wave or full wave bridge configuration. Smoothing using capacitors and inductors. Regulation using zener diode in a shunt regulator configuration and the care and feeding of three terminal regulators.
We then discussed the different major classes of amplifiers (A, B and C) and how we achieve these configurations, the good and the bad of each design.
We also covered frequency multipliers and mixers, and how these can be used to achieve different frequencies from lower frequency, more stable oscillators.
Now that we are heading away from the basic electronics side of things, into more radio based items, this is where the course will benefit me.

Upgrade week 4

Well, 1/3 down already, my how time flies. Last night we covered circuit symbols and semiconductors, more specifically different types of diodes, varicaps, zeners etc, and various ways of biasing and using them. We also touched on bipolar transistors, which are current devices and FETs (Field Effect Transistors), which are voltage devices, different types of circuit configuration, common emitter/source, common base/gate and common collector/source, their basic characteristics, how common emitter causes phase inversion, and what hfe or beta (current gain) means. Here is an interesting fact, FETs are always drawn with the drain to the top. Another fun filled night with yet a different facilitator, man we must be wearing them out fast.

License upgrade continued...

Week 3 of the REAST standard license upgrade course has flown by, this time with a different instructor. We did the usual review of previous weeks work, did some more work on capacitors then looked at resonance and tuned circuits, and the current and voltage properties of both series and parallel tuned circuits. Then transformers, both as ac voltage changing, and also as impedance matching. When I got home, I had a go at the sample quizzes on the Radio and Electronics School cd-roms, the first 8 cover what we have been taught so far, and I was quite pleased at the results. More than enough to get a pass on the theory exam. I hope this continues.

Father's Day

This morning I received presents from my youngest two, ones that they had made themselves. Chocolate chip cookies from Kristy, and a table placemat that was made from coiled french knitting that Chelsea has been doing over the last week. Thanks heaps kids.

The upgrade path continues..

Last night we continued our studies for the standard license upgrade, we reviewed last weeks resistor theory, then we covered frequency, this included wavelength, fundamental and harmonic frequencies and how to calculate each. Inductance was discussed, including why we need to use inductors, the effect on circuits and reactance, the inductors resistance to AC signals. We covered how to calculate values, both in series and parallel. We also started on capacitance, but only briefly, how series and parallel calculations are the opposite to resistors and inductors. Quite painless until we got to the part where you convert the value of a capacitor from one unit of measure to another, like picofarads to microfarads. I think I got it in the end.

The things you see..

On our way into Glenorchy today, look what we saw.. some people have no respect for other peoples property. Police had already been to it, fingerprint dust all over it, and the plates were gone. "Parked" down near the old causeway for the long gone Bailey Bridge.

Think of the possibilities!!

This could be interesting!
Have a look at the box at the top right of screen with your camera equipped mobile phone. The software to decode it can be found by following this link. I am using i-nigma on both my imate jasjam windows PC phone, and on Char's Nokia N80. The N80 uses Symbian OS/9
The i-nigma site also has a cool generator to produce your own images, like the one here.

I can think of several uses for this, in fact, I may use one of them soon.

A fresh load of drivel!!

Testing Drivel as a blogging application

Test from desktop

This is just a short test of a Gnome applet (gnome-blog 0.9.1) to post a blog directly from the desktop under Ubuntu Linux.

The upgrade path begins

Last night I went to the first of 12 weeks of the standard license upgrade course. This is targeted at foundation license holders, enabling them to use higher power, more frequencies, more modes (digital etc...)
Considering it took me 35 years to get my basic license, 2 years between getting that far and upgrading to the next level is pretty good for me. One day I may even finish the upgrade off and get my advanced. One thing at a time.
We covered basic electricity fundamentals, ohm's law, resistors in series, in parallel, series/parallel combinations. Fortunately (for me anyway), the parallel combinations are all using the same value resistors, this makes it much easier to calculate the end value.

Ubuntu Ultimate Edition 1.4

I finally downloaded the DVD version of UUE 1.4, I was using a self upgraded UUE 1.4 CD-ROM install, that was getting sluggish. So I backed up my home directory to the fileserver over night, did a fresh install and restored my home directory. Very snappy now, most pleased. I have yet to install many games, but I don't have time for playing them anyway.
Oh well, off to work again.

Walking on air

Nice pic of Rah at hockey. EXIF data says 1/640 sec and f3.5