Isn't it true that the impedance of a half-wave dipole at its resonant frequency is around 73 ohms? If so, a 75 ohm cable should work just fine.
When it came to learning CW which is what the statement you quoted me on was about, for sure, I was doing it all wrong. But in the absence of a suitable mentor, that is to be expected and the group of people doing the criticising had all been given the opportunity to offer and impart their wisdom, they chose not to, but criticise me after the fact because I did not do it their way.
A retesting of all ham operators will be required. You must be able to type a coherent sentence with proper punctuation. Failure to do so will mean revocation of typing privileges.
Well, perhaps I am confused about all this foundation license stuff. The way I see the market is those guys got more with their introductory license than we do. http://www.wia.org.au/licenses/foundation/about/ Technician here is not as liberal for allocations. I did my Novice, Technician, and because of my morse code a Tech Plus, later I went to General, then Extra. Most of the modes and frequencies for that earlier license were not available.
Perhaps the author is not complaining about the allocations, I must admit repetitive fees for license holding is archaic.
''I did not do it their way.'' Their way ? There is no - their way. The way or technique to send CW , or hold a QSO in CW (and indeed in all modes) is determined by the communications authorities and / or the local Ham league. The correct way is not determined by the opinion of a few local Hams. ------------- ''the group of people -- chose not to,'' It is there right to help others who and when they like. They don't owe you anything. You are an adult and for sure by now you must have realized that in life there is no free lunch. In Australia (and in the USA) obtaining a Ham license has NEVER been easier. More locations to take tests , more - simply presented study materials , simpler tests , easier (lower classes) license to pass , and it's cheaper - - Yet people expect more and simpler. ?? Not only that but they expect other people to give free help when required and get upset when its withheld. I have a solution , kill off the introductory class license , toughen up all the classes , and THEN make everyone learn the course material in a foreign language without any outside help., then take the test in the foreign language. That will sort out the men from the boys. That's what I had to do , so sorry , I cannot see your point of view , because compared to what I went through ,, F class Hams have had it TOO easy and seem to be just whining about nothing. gregW OH2FFY
I am not upset that people did not want to help Greg, that is their pejorative, people are busy and have other things that might be more interesting or important for them to be doing. But if you are asked to offer guidance and you REFUSE to offer any, don't expect to have the RIGHT to criticise after the fact that it was not done how you would have done it. And in that, yeah there are few elmers and plenty of experts who just want to tell you you are wrong. Ultimately people like that are just waiting for the opportunity to go hahaha you're stupid, and they are assholes, but thats ok with you because they have an Adv ticket?
So you are saying that if you ask someone for help and they , for whatever reason refuse , and then see YOU screw up , that they are not allowed to say anything afterward ? If a person has that viewpoint from the start they will find life very , very lonely. I am unlikely to offer help to people that impose restrictions on me as to what , or when I can say something.. --------- It is not about the type of ticket. You may feel that Standard and Advanced ticket holders point out your faults and F Ops do not , and it may appear to be the case .. However , the reason why F Ops do not point out your faults is not because they are good or kind people , it is because they themselves do not know better. They do not have the experience or knowledge to see or detect when another Op is doing something wrong, either in operating their station or when discussing some technical issue. Of course it is going to be those that hold higher license that point out faults , because they have 'been there done that'. In fact .. I would say that if a holder of a higher ticket DOESN'T point out a mistake from a lower level Ham , that he is actually doing a disservice to that Ham.. Not all learning experiences in life are pleasant , and most often , the painful ones are the ones that we will never forget. There is no basis for holding the idea that being corrected for our mistakes is a class problem. Any Ham of ANY CLASS that ventures onto the air with a dirty signal will quickly be told to immediately clean up his act or leave until he does so. There is no superiority distinction there , yet likely a F Op would take that criticism as a personal insult ....... Approaching all interaction with other Hams with that attitude will only leads to sadness and disappointment. With that predisposition a person will ALWAYS find negativity - where there is none. .... And then there is the other side .... The side of the Advanced Op that offers help , and is rejected by the lower class Op who has this 'class' mindset. An example.... On Youtube there is a Basic Class Op from Canada. He makes videos about the things that he does in his shack. Occasionally he builds things and for the most part , it is just trash cobbled together. His construction standards are VERY poor to say the least. I made the comment --- But he wasn't interested. Of course it is just a matter of time before he blows the front end out of a connected receiver when he transmits with another radio connected through this switch box as it has poor isolation between the ports. This means that antenna switch does not fully isolate other radios when they are switched out. In turn that means that RF from the transmitter not only goes to the antenna , but also to the other connected radios. This is NOT good. ! How does he respond when others offer him advice , or even hints that he has done something wrong ? He gets abusive , rants , and deletes comments , only allowing comments which pat him on the back and say ''Well done - Nice work''. The fact is , his work is TRASH , and he is so uneducated and ignorant that he doesn't even know it. He takes EVERY comment that doesn't agree with him as being a personal insult , obviously (in his mind) due to his being a low level license holder. The funny thing , is that he has been making this same trash for nearly 2 decades and STILL hasn't learned anything. You may claim that Standards and Advanced Hams pick on your work or what you do , and you consider them to be assholes..... but the shoe also fits on the other foot , there are Basics , F's and Techs that are so up themselves that they can no longer see daylight. When higher level Hams offer help , they just either ignore them , or get upset and play the victim. gregW OH2FFY
I do not disagree with you, the rejection of knowledge is ignorance. But you have taken my comment way out of the context in which it was given. Specifically it was about how to go about learning CW, there is a lot of conflicting information on the net on what method is better for guys with no idea, koch, farnsworth, phone apps, arrl tapes, slow speed, high speed, straight key, iambic, single paddle. It is information overload and i was seeking clarity Now if i came to you and asked your views on how to go about it and you offered none and then 2 weeks later after you see im using a paddle and farsnworth, dont go telling me that koch and a straight key is how you should do it. Yes people who do things like that are assholes, and in that, I encountered plenty of self professed experts who did not have the time or inclination when asked to proffer their wisdom, but were happy to tell me I was learning a differnt way that it was wrong after the fact. As for your comment to the youtube guy, if you posted that on my blog it would not be published because the comment offers nothing of utility. What can I do with a comment like that? Nothing. A question "have you measured the port to port isolation on the switch" either starts some dialog where I learn something or it sparks an action where I learn something. For me, its the whole elmer verses expert thing and I just don't have time for smart asses who think they are experts. Thankfully there are people who are not trolls like you and actually know how to explain things in a clear and logical manner. No, I dont play victim, nor do i ignore the guidance of people smarter than me, but i do have a strong aversion to narcissists and assholes. Here take a read of this thread I started. You might actually learn how real elmers offer advice. https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/taking-off-the-training-wheels.563470/page-5
I share your views about the dumbing down of amateur radio to 110%, but before expanding on this, I would like to satisfy my curiosity: For how long have you lived in Finland, and did you take your test in Finnish or in Swedish? 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
I have been here for almost 15 years and I took all my tests in Finnish , which means that I had to learn all the unique and often quite illogical words that they use here to describe technical matters. For those that do not know anything about Finnish , it is not related to English in anyway , such as French or German is , and is just as hard to learn as Chinese , perhaps even harder. There is no course material or testing done in English , although there is an outdated sample pool in very rough English. It can give an idea of the type of questions that will be asked in the test , but are not close enough that you can learn by studying the question pool and hope to bluff your way through the tests through answer memorization. Even for Fins ,, if you know the subject you will pass , but if you don't know it , it will become obvious at test time. I am not the smartest person around , so if I can learn and pass my tests in a foreign language , then surely everyone else should be able to do it in their own native language. gregW OH2FFY
What attitude are you on about i never said i had no time for Fcalls and as for no interest in sharing time and knowledge i spent countless days teaching people who wanted to go from the ranks of CB radio to the Novice licence so before you go and post assumptions about me ask me what i have done and did.I never said i was an expert again an assumption on your part but in over 60 years in the hobby i have learnt a lot and as i posted earlier am still learning i never said you are responsible for destroying the hobby the WIA did that again i say and ask the question what was wrong with the Novice licence exam, okay scrap the Morse but the theory level was not that difficult i had many students pass exams and that included the 5wpm Morse at that time no but in order to build up their dwindling membership the WIA did a complete reshuffle and the result speaks for itself did not increase their membership much did it,as for learning the resistor colour code you say you want to home brew a station well tell me how you are going to identify the values of components needed as most components such as resistors and capacitors are colour coded ,you have a power supply that goes dead you need a resistor it is colour coded you do not have a circuit diagram so if you do not know the colour code what do you do.By the way it is not just a simple matter of i will put a new resistor you must find out why the component failed failing all that take the supply to a technician say fix it and pay whatever he asks is that really what it is all about.Please do not tar me with that arguement that you posted about me as i said i held classes for Novice licence students over many years also did many Scout jamborees over the years when i was able to donated my time and gear and enjoyed it all but age creeps up on us all and with it health issues as in my case.If you feel you are destroying the hobby take up knitting do yourself a favour .
Greg...I whole heartily agree with your comments i did not have an army of persons suitably qualified to help me with getting my advanced licence some 60 yrs ago my introduction came through my primary school teacher he was a ham he ran a small class after school for 2 days a week at school but he was at retiring age so after a few months it stopped the rest was up to me with the help of my uncle who purchased books for me that i still have from all that long ago.The problem we have is that people expect it all for nothing i am sure there would be hundreds lining up at Radio branch if all exams were scrapped and the fee put up to say $150 the people who want something for nothing would be kicking the door down to get that piece of paper.Australia has one of the easiest exams that will get you on the air you do not need to know much i have seen the exam as i said in one of my earlier replies we had a novice licence i was 100% behind it multiple choice regulations and theory yes some effort needed and off course that curse Morse Code i cannot understand why the powers to be just did not can the Morse and keep the rest as it was but there were forces at work behind the scenes here needing to pick up membership that was leaving them in big numbers this was their way out of a dilemma it failed and what have we now ,we have johnny come lately telling me i do not have the right to express an opinion about the direction of the hobby i love with a passion get called names abused and it is mainly by the new F Calls .
This was certainly an accomplishment. Technical Finnish is quite difficult, and after having a look at the practice exams, I would say that they were inspired by the German exams which probably hold the European record in difficulty. Compared to the German "Klasse A", the FCC Extra class exam is quite elementary. I came to research the exam requirements for amateur radio in 2012, when the Swedish regulator formed a working party tasked with formulating the requirements for future amateur radio certificate exams that should fulfill the CEPT HAREC level. As having previous experience from ITU and CEPT work regarding professional radio, I was designated by the Swedish society ESR (Experimenting Swedish Radio-amateurs, a body solely devoted to improving the quality of amateur radio) to be part of this group. ESR also established a sub-group tasked with researching and producing background material. We had the fortune of being able to connect with very qualified people in this sub-group, as an example it counted one college teacher and PhD student in didactics, one multi-linguist and one University lecturer that ïs married to a Romanian speaker. All had MSEE or comparable backgrounds. The ESR sub-group researched about 15 European and non-European question pools and syllabi, and compiled a comprehensive list of requirements and their applications, and the current Swedish pool was compared to both the CEPT HAREC requirements and to the requiments in other countries. It turned out the supposedly HAREC-compatible current question pool and syllabus only covered less than 30% of the material it was supposed to. These findings were put on the table at the second working-party meeting, which started a furious response from the national society SSA, whose president had appointed himself to the group. By all means, personal attacks and libel included, they wanted to discredit both the regulator and ESR. They wanted everything to remain as it was before when they ran amateur radio as some kind of private enterprise without transparency. To make a long story short, it ended up with the lawyers at the regulator finally losing patience and disbanding the group. This started the downward spiral in the relations between the Authorities and amateur radio in Sweden. A year later, the regulator made an audit of the examinations and licencing arrangements done by SSA. They found evidence of quite wide-spread irregularites, such as providing licences without examination. The regulator then imposed a quite harsh quality-assurance program onto the SSA, with resulted in some quite interesting results. Before the new exams and the tighter procedures, the success rate was very close to 100%, but afterwards the success rate became a more realistic around 65-70%. It appears that the previous regime did not let anybody fail. This was another step towards the abyss. Finally, a very strange chain of events lead to the final nail in the coffin. There was an interest from the Radiation Protection Agency of finding out what could be expected from amateur radio installations in terms of EMF exposure. I became approached by the agency as an engineering consultant to prepare some installations that may be representative for amateur radio in urban and sub-urban dwellings. Especially the cases of balcony and Indoor mount (stealth) were investigated. The results did not cause much case for concern, but it was noted that the field strengths from electrically small antennas could be considerable, which OTOH has been known in the "small antenna community" for ages. The measurements and the agency report were discussed in several amateur radio web-forums, and then all hell broke loose. Several "radio amateurs", incidentally coming from the CB ranks, started a campaign against the regulator, the Radiation Protection Agency and finally myself, where both my professional and personal reputations were to be smeard. Thankfully I got the full support of my employer, that involved their legal team and also Corporate security. However, the culmination came when one of the activists made a formal complaint to the overseeing body for the public sector, accusing the agencies for corruption and for framing a conspiracy against amateur radio. The complaint promptly went into the waste-basket but the damage was already done. Lawyers at the agencies involved started to read the forums, and did not like at all what they saw. Radio amateurs were viewed as incompetent and petty whiners that had no sense for manners. This was the start of "deep-frozen" relations between regulators and amateur radio. A state of "Cold-War" now exists, with many influential officials now quite openly hostile to amateur radio. Quite severe future reductions of privileges, especially regarding power levels, may become a result of these brainless actions. This brings us to the end of this discussion. It may be wise to keep the whining about the incompetence of regulating agencies off public forums. Representatives for the agencies may read and form their own conclusions. Remember that our privileges are not cast in stone and may be reduced or revoked at the whim of an agency lawyer... 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
