My Experience Getting Licensed in Ham Radio
I just got my ham radio license! I started studying for my ham radio test at the suggestion of my friend David, who was also studying for his first license at the time. He made a strong pitch to my technological curiosity and urban survivalist interests by suggesting we could potentially communicate with each other without the assistance of the power grid or cell tower networks.
I bought the spiral-bound Technician Class manual, and its corresponding question book, and began reading. Since I’m already familiar with basic electronics, some of the concepts were easy to grasp.
Other topics were completely new to me, like ham etiquette and the regulatory stuff. Wave behaviors stood out as particularly fun and novel to me– here’s an awesome video about wave behaviors that helps illuminate the subject beautifully:
I picked up a portable radio that I’ve seen commonly recommended as a first radio: it’s a BaoFeng UV-5R (3rd generation) (with an upgraded antenna). I looked up the times and frequencies of some nets in my local area and tuned my radio to listen in. I found it helpful to pick up a programming cable, so I could program my local repeaters and stations into my radio’s memory.
