Something about me and HAM

Hello everyone, it's been a few years since I became interested in RF equipment and went to the radio electronics club and competition in high school, but only now after ten years (2022) I decided to get my radio amateur exam and broadcast licence. At school, the difficulty of the tests, which at the time also included telegraphy exams, discouraged me from taking exams, and there was no money for a proper transceiver.

The current situation looked a little better, telegraphy is no longer required (although I plan to learn it) and a transceiver is now commonly available. So far I like listening to AirBand, satellites and ISS and sometimes some radio amateurs. I am mainly attracted by the physical aspects of electromagnetic waves and also special events, for example on the ISS (SSTV, Repeater...) and telemetry of APRS and weather satellites. Now I am very excited HF bands and ionospheric propagation.

Exam preparation

The decision to take the professional competence tests and of course the concession itself came around the new year 2022, during this period between the holidays traffic on the bands is a bit bigger and I was sorry that I could not talk (specifically about the location of the antenna...) with my colleagues radio amateurs, moreover, I already owned a TRX Yaesu FT-70DE and it would be a shame not to use the potential of this transceiver. I delved into the problem a little more and when I discovered what can be done if I have the possibility to communicate via a converter and the like (WIRES-X...) it would be a real shame not to have a concession.

The preparation for the exams therefore started for the new year and lasted until 8 March 2022, when the exams were held at CTU. I don't learn very easily and especially prefixes and Q-codes were not very good for me. For example, abbreviations and electrical theory, I again had an advantage in English, from which the abbreviations are mostly based, and electrical was generally not a problem. Even so, I devoted enough time to the preparation and I didn't want to underestimate anything, after all, the trip to Prague from Olomouc and the time frame of 3 months, that's not something you want to do twice. So every day I did 240 questions from the exercises + 2x the entire test, the following pages "http://ham.smoce.net/" helped me with this, which will really prepare you for an excellent exam. Even so, it's a good idea to look at the current questions to see if anything has changed, including the exam schedule or other study materials.

The exam itself took place in peace except for traveling from 2:30 AM, however, despite the fact that I was "sure" of the answers, probably due to nervousness, I made a total of 2 mistakes for the entire test. (16, 4+8+4 is allowed) and everything has worked out flawlessly for me in the last few days in preparation for the tests. The registration of the OK5LM concession/brand at CTU was on 21.3.2022 (ref. 290556).

RIG and HAM-Shack

Regarding the equipment (RIG) and equipment of the broadcasting position (HAM-Shack) I will try to describe as briefly as possible.

I fell for the Japanese brand Yaesu, although my first TRX was a Baofeng, which is now only suitable for listening to FM radio. I also had an Alinco DJ-VX50 in my hand, but I wasn't very impressed, in recent years Alinco has been made in China, and especially the SW tuning and sensitivity to AM AirBand was bad.

Unfortunately, due to the QTH in the block of flats, I'm not able to stretch the big (LW or MLA) KV antenna. However I have very limited balcony antenna type LW – 5meters with shorten coil)

RIGs : YAESU FT-70DE, YAESU FTM-300DE, YAESU VX-8E and now Xiegu G90 with 3m LW tentative balcony antenna :-)

Regarding the HAM-Shack, for several years now I have had a small workshop instead of a wardrobe or a chamber in a block of flats, where I have complete electrical equipment (from sources, generator, oscilloscope to a complete PC, gamma spectrometer and the like...) so I am currently installing a YAESU FTM there -300DE and I will take the antenna outside, I bought a Mean Well LRS-200-12 as a power supply, so I will see if it will be OK