Amateur radio

I did what felt like a nineties style thing (to me) today. I applied to join a club! The local amateur radio club. Furthermore, I completed the amateur radio foundation licence exam. I’m pretty happy with this as an achievement. I know people who’ve spent their lives in radio would have found it simple. I didn’t find it difficult so much as I found it to be something like the missing link from my existing IT knowledge. Given that IT (and now by extension, amateur radio) are not my day job, this certainly adds a new perspective to radios and technology for me to explore (and write about).

I spent the most part of this year studying the foundation textbook and taking trial exam after trial exam online. In true nineties style, I have a whole notebook dedicated to hand written notes and diagrams that I’ve been carrying around with me. Writing thoughts and realisations down, studying and reviewing my notes and trial exam results in the odd/idle moments of life. It has actually been quite refreshing and rewarding. There’s something about physical writing that helps me commit information to memory, and there’s something exciting about that information being new!

I’ve actually enjoyed the somewhat slow study journey I’ve started.

No pressure.

Do the exam when I'm ready.

Keep on keeping on.

I’m learning something almost completely new to me, and I have accepted that I need more than a day for it to properly sink in. I’ve built two simple antennas (the second one after I realised a fundamental flaw in the first) thus far and I have a radio receiver that I’ve been learning to program to scan local frequencies. I’m sure it can do more, but slow and steady as they say… I now know the national calling frequency and the approximate frequencies where people jump off to, to keep the calling frequency free.

Everyday I learn a little more, and that’s enough.

I’m planning to start studying the advanced licence in the new year. With a day job, it will probably take me that long anyway!

What are your thoughts?

Unmoderated comments out in the wild aren’t really nineties style, so I’ll meet you half way. You can write to me at: writer.as@nineties.style - Sorry, no conventional mailing address.

I’ve no intention to publish anything sent to me, although I may use your point of view to enhance my own ;-)

Be honest, put in the effort (or don’t) and above all, to thine own self be true.

Before you take a fence…

Let me be clear. I’m no expert on anything you’ve just read. I worked in IT for 22+ years, had something in the realm of a mid-life crisis and now I don’t work in IT any more. These are just my unfiltered thoughts on the topic. Take it with a grain of salt. I read, and I know things.