Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

Re:Hacking Ham Radio for Texting by genewitch on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @08:53PM (#29261202)

I'm gonna be a little bit of a jerk, here. The general can be crammed for but I don't think it should be. Cram the technician license if you just "gotta get on air". The general and extra should be reserved for people who can answer questions at their level and below. Merely reading part 97 of the FCC regulations is enough to technically pass the parts of all three that don't have anything to do with "a station", yet 90% of every argument I've had with hams is interpretation of said rules ( and part 95, and part 90.)

I don't want to discourage anyone, but the investment in effort and money between tech and general is in the 4-5 digit range of dollars and hours.

By all means study. But cramming the test questions isn't studying and will leave you as an appliance operator that will constantly be told, if ever on the air, that they're doing something either rude, against the rules, or dangerous.

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Re:Hacking Ham Radio for Texting by ryanmercer on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @09:58PM (#29261539)

I don't feel that any of the questions on the general actually equip me to know how to even connect the components of a complete radio setup up, so I'll just have to agree to disagree.

A good chunk of the questions are memorizing frequencies and wattages you're allowed to use for various things... something you can print off on a chart and tape to the wall.

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Re:Hacking Ham Radio for Texting by genewitch on Thursday November 18, 2021 @01:33AM (#29262616)

there's questions about common mode interference and other RFI things, cabling, antennas, and things like that. strict "rules only" is technician - what bands, how much power (which gets interesting in quite a few bands), and so on. Technician is like "set up a modem to get on a BBS."

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