From the Ground Up

and their uses.

goes back to basics with resistors

As I mentioned in a previous Keylines, my ten-year old granddaughter has been studying with the Essex Ham online course for the Foundation exam which, I’m delighted to say, she has now passed.

It’s been quite an eye opener. I know there are plenty of old hands who scoff at how easy it is to get started in the hobby nowadays. However, coming at it, as she did, from a position of knowing nothing about radio, the syllabus is actually quite daunting, covering a wide range of topics from antennas to radio theory, from licensing conditions to dealing with interference. While I can accept the need for all this at Intermediate or Full licence level (ie for those who have tried the hobby and want to pursue it further), I’m having trouble reconciling it with the needs of someone who is going to be restricted to 10W from a commercially manufactured transceiver (or approved kit).

Does a Foundation licensee really need to know that mains is at 50Hertz, that the ionosphere reaches to 400km (how many Full licensees would know that?) or, dare I say it, even Ohms Law? We can learn to drive a car without needing to know what goes on under the bonnet. Yes, licensing regulations and basic operating, sure. And something on EMC. But as for the rest of it?

I’m far from convinced. In a recent Letter a correspondent mentions the low cost of entry into other hobbies such as railway modelling but perhaps more to the point, there is no exam to be passed to try them out.

While in these pages we have seen a recent discussion about the proposal for a Beginners Licence, I would be more inclined to recast the current Foundation licence, either reducing the pass mark (19 out of 26 would be a Distinction in pretty much any other exam) or simplifying the syllabus, or both.

And, incidentally, one of the biggest hurdles faced by my granddaughter was the ‘grown up’ language of the questions, using words such as ‘mandate’ and ‘utilise’, which she had not previously come across and which, to my mind, are actually unnecessary in setting the questions – maybe a case of the questions having been drawn up by a worthy committee of elderly men?

Of course, we can all be delighted at the number of newcomers to the hobby during lockdown, but I have a feeling many are older and maybe have an existing background in electronics.

I’d welcome reader thoughts, as always.

Clarification

Our Icom Antenna Switch article last month appears to have caused confusion in some quarters, if only because the author had put the word Icom on the front of the unit. Just to clarify, this is not an Icom product but a homebrew project intended to work with the popular Icom IC-7300 transceiver (but which can also be made to work with other gear too).

PW Contents

I must apologise that last month’s Coming Next Month listing turns out to have been something of a work of fiction in that most of the highlighted articles don’t appear in this issue (though they will feature next month). But I did want to squeeze in the FTM300D review and a couple of other articles that were equally timely.

Practical Wireless Magazine