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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 11th Sep 2018, 11:56 am   #141
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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CB gave amateur radio a terrific boost,
Interesting. I had been interested in radio from age 13 and well before the advent of CB. School radio club was set up around an HRO until some idiot stuffed it with paper and set fire to it.

When CB came along, I turned my nose up at it, despairing of all the wannabe yanks with their silly jargon and illegal activities.

I had a manager at that time who was into it and using increasing levels of power up to 400W, aggravating all his neighbours. One of them even vandalised his wife's garden as revenge. Eventually I gave him an ultimatum... Either he gives it up and I will coach him through the RAE or I will shop him to the Post Office as it was then. Thankfully he did the decent thing and was active on HF and 2m until he died maybe 10* years ago.

* Actually, it is rather strange to note that his QRZ profile has been edited a couple of times since he died, so maybe he is still trying to communicate? ;-)
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Old 11th Sep 2018, 3:44 pm   #142
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Lots of things came together to give amateur radio a boost in the late 70s early 80s: The sunspot cycle made conditions very favourable for 27MHz operation which had become a cult due to exposure on TV and films and, although illegal, had become unstoppable by shear weight of numbers. Communicating with friends and neighbours without wires, plus the possibility of making new friends on air, was a huge novelty in the days of costly metered telphone calls and nearly two decades before mobile phones would become commonplace. Where once my back garden aerials were an item of curiosity, and sometimes disapproval, all of a sudden there were 'twigs' all down the street and on every bit of high ground on evenings and weekends there were cars sporting 27MHz whips chasing DX. Ham radio was the next logical step for the latter type of CBer. Amateur radio (especially on 2 metres at this time) was emerging from homebrew and modiifed ex-PMR equipment into plug-in-and-play commercial solutions which provided a fairly simple means for the new licensee to get on the air sucessfully. The RAE was modified so that failure in one part was no longer failure as a whole (I might have obtained my G8 licence years earlier than I did had I been able to retake just the licensing laws part instead of deferring to spend my time taking O & A Levels*) and then, though this is a suggestion guaranteed to stir up controversy, probably became easier when multiple choice questions displaced written answers and the drawing of circuit diagrams.

One thing that seems to have been overlooked in this thread (unless I have missed it) is that as G8s were permitted no lower than 2m, and that this was by far the easiest band for a class B to get on, the number of newly licensed G8s appearing on 2m became a torrent. I remember having to tune well away from the SSB calling frequency to find a clear channel for a QSO, the band was so full, and you'd spot 2m antennae all over the place. Morse contacts weren't difficult to come by either and a ragchew in morse was a bit more testing than an HF rubber stamp QSO! So many of the new G8s were interested enough to study morse that I became part of an informal 2m on-air slow morse tuition group (strictly speaking this was probably outside the terms of my Class A licence but hey-ho) and enough going for the test that, being 100 miles from the coast, an arrangement for a coastal station examiner to do exam sessions at a local school was made.

Then CB became legal and on FM and part of the excitement went away. Ham radio had become easier to get into and thus was easier to get out of. Those for whom it was passing fad gave it up plus other technological interests such as computers and the internet arrived. We know the rest. I still see a few amateur aerials in my locality - there is a new installation not far from me - but what I do spot is mostly HF.

*I copped for a particularly obscure licensing laws question and knew I was sunk as soon as I saw it. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
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Old 11th Sep 2018, 6:34 pm   #143
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

I did sweet FA revision for my RAE and got a distinction in both parts. I am no genius so draw your own conclusions. I was one of the first groups to take the multiple choice exams.
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Old 11th Sep 2018, 9:39 pm   #144
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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I was one of the first groups to take the multiple choice exams.
My RAE exam (1994) was also of the multi choice type. I didn't attend an RAE course but did work dilligently through the companion 'Book of the Course', the name of which I can not remember.

I did have the advantage of having first played with and then worked with electronics (including radio) from around age 11, so it was mainly the procedural / legal stuff that I had to try to absorb.

I spent a short time as a 'B' licencee and then passed the Morse 12WPM test, although to my shame did next to nothing with CW after that, and whatever proficiency I'd ever had in Morse withered away very soon afterwards.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 12:09 am   #145
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Well tonight I just proved that there are still people on 2 Metres around these parts. I was in the shack (actually watching TV!) and casually monitoring the local repeater, HA. Someone called for a contact and I answered, partly due to the influence of this thread. It turned into an hour of chat and attracted two more people to join in the conversation. I think we are going to try to arrange a sched for Tuesday nights at 8PM, so we will see how it goes. Regarding the popularity of CB in the early 'eighties, this was greatly influenced by the sunspot peak around 1980/81. I was of the "right age" for CB to be exciting, and fondly remember the activity on AM coming in across the Atlantic with signal meters on end stops. This definitely fueled my interest for all things radio. Apart from the fact that it was a great way to keep in touch with your mates in the sticks and arrange nights out.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 6:55 am   #146
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Sunspots had a huge influence. My most memorable qso ever was with a small handheld cb radio. I was on top of Snowdon and contacted a chap calling himself Red Fox from Boston, Mass. Brilliant. Just brilliant. Except i was part way through my RAE and was actually very worried that Id get found out and banned... (i wasnt a cb operator, but a school mate had these walkietalkies, so...radio was fun, still is, whatever frequency. I still dont operate cb but im told theres a lot of activity in certain blocks of freqs. I dont really understand it.)

Ive just been listening and calling on hf...thers nothing there, bands are stone dead. If the radio surge happened now, it would be a very different story.

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Old 12th Sep 2018, 7:01 am   #147
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20m was dead last night but I think that is down to conditions rather than activity.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 10:28 am   #148
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I did sweet FA revision for my RAE and got a distinction in both parts. I am no genius so draw your own conclusions. I was one of the first groups to take the multiple choice exams.
I did the same although I only got a credit for the second part but I had been a TV engineer for the previous 30 years, if I hadn't passed I shouldn't really have been doing my job.

Anyone involved in electronics should have been able to pass the RAE but the CW was different, I had to learn that like most other people and it was hard work. I only did it to get on HF and haven't really used it but it is useful for identifying 2m repeaters although I rarely use them.

My wife also got her license, she wasn't the least bit interested in ham radio initially one day I arrived home after being away overnight and she told me how to bias a transistor and it needed 0.6v to do so. She had been watching a programme called 'Circuit training' by Carol Vaudaman and Rod Michael Rod, I recorded the whole series for her, went through the RAE syllabus book and the mock exams one, she took the exam as an external candidate at a local club and passed, and of course she now has the bonus of HF - although she doesn't use the radio at all now.

My initial call sign was G1EFX which she now owns since I graduated to G0HET.

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Old 12th Sep 2018, 11:48 am   #149
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Being multiple choice makes it far too easy. Two of the four options were clearly nonsense, even to someone with no knowledge whatever. So that gives a 50/50 chance of passing, despite having little or no actual knowledge.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 1:02 pm   #150
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Except for the 11 Plus the RAE was the first 'public' examination that I sat. I got the latest copy of RSGB RAE Manual - this would be a 1960s edition - and worked through it. I was an active SWL, including 2m, so had got to know the procedures, bands and power limits, etc., pretty well.

The transmitter circuits seemed to be a bit out of date as SSB was already well-established on HF but nevertheless it gave me a grounding in basic circuitry. We didn't study physics until the 4th year at my secondary school and I struggled with maths so I decided to learn enough of the other stuff to avoid any questions involving calculations. I got a reasonable pass grade in part 2 which tempered my disappointment as I'm no genius either.

The RAE I passed some years later (still a written paper where failure in one part meant failure as a whole) seemed much easier and I even did the 'math' question which was simple stuff, although, by now I was an adult and had finally had the benefit of an excellent maths teacher for the 5th form year. Once I got a grasp I found that I actually enjoyed maths and solving problems. (Sadly, it was all a bit too late in the day for I was already far adrift in the science subjects - I have often wondered what might have been.)

G4 was my ultimate aim and so I slogged through the morse. This took a lot of perseverence - I noticed that I would get stuck at a particular speed and then suddenly break through it. Ultimately I found I enjoyed CW as it was ideal for going far with little: I had some remarkable 2m DX contacts with a couple of watts CW when there was a lift.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 5:33 pm   #151
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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I did sweet FA revision for my RAE and got a distinction in both parts. I am no genius so draw your own conclusions. I was one of the first groups to take the multiple choice exams.
I think it is possible that the people setting the RAE have improved things. I stumbled upon a website a while ago with some recent past papers, and it seemed to me that some of the questions were quite tricky (and I sat the old style RAE 50 years ago). There were certainly some questions where I could narrow it down to to two answers, but would have to have guessed in the end. My impression was that the modern papers are now comparable in difficulty to the old ones.

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Old 12th Sep 2018, 5:33 pm   #152
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I agree with Peter N in that I kept my RAE exam very quiet among workmates at the time because to fail would have been pretty embarrassing as my job then was looking after some fairly large radio networks. Luckily I passed. I found the theory ok but the license conditions I had to swot for. None of my workmates were licensed except my old boss and his sidekick who had left before I did my RAE. Later on, bizarrely a couple of my mates started playing about with learning morse just for the challenge, but I never took to it.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 7:33 pm   #153
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Question 5.

"What is a bleed resistor?"

A) a device used for blood tests. -easily discounted as being irrelevant to the subject.-
B)
C) can't recall the other daft option.
D)


Question 6. Look at the circuit diagram of a transistor amplifier below. Is it

A) a common emitter amplifier
B) a common collector amplifier
C) a common base amplifier
D) a valve amplifier

Question 7. In the common emitter amplifier shown above...
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 9:53 pm   #154
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I sat the multi choice RAE when I was a spotty student back in the 1980s and one of my lecturers was a keen ham and he organised the event/venue for the local RAE exam. He assured us that the multi choice exam was a bit more demanding than the written exam despite all the tales to the contrary from older established hams who took the written exam.

The problem with the written exam was that it discriminated (unnecessarily) against people with poor literacy and/or exam phobia. It was also much harder to mark quickly and consistently. However, there were usually only a few written questions and most of them were very easy and you only had to choose to answer something like 8 out of 10 questions. So you could dodge the tougher questions and not drop any marks. For most people, both were easy exams if you were keen and prepared to do some basic swotting beforehand.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 10:27 pm   #155
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Easy to knock it now. I too did the multichoice exam...I had no choice. I spent weeks and weeks going to night school until I knew the lot. I have forty years behind me of licenced home building, fixing, learning and operating. Did my no-option multi choice make me a worse amateur? I dont think so. I was a very proud G8 then later a very proud G4. I still am.
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Old 12th Sep 2018, 11:16 pm   #156
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I tried searching for old RAE papers online and found an example of the classic old written RAE here:

http://www.g4dmp.co.uk/rae/rae1978d.pdf

You can see that you can choose to dodge the tougher questions and not lose any marks. I think that many keen SWLs and radio and electronics enthusiasts could do quite well in that exam without doing any amateur radio related swotting beforehand.

Compare this to the newer multi choice exam here:

http://www.g4dmp.co.uk/reports/rae1998m.pdf

Obviously opinions will vary but I think the later multi choice exam would require more knowledge of the rules and procedures and it asks a lot more questions and you can't dodge any questions you don't like. So no surprise that many people went to night classes to swot up on the theory and rules etc.
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Old 13th Sep 2018, 7:36 am   #157
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I was out mobile again yestrrday and spoke to a mate on air...a very rare experience. He is about to pop up a beam and do his bit for vhf voice. I might be tempted to put mine back up...but i know the result will be empty log and empty wallet. Hope over expectation and all that.
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Old 13th Sep 2018, 8:36 am   #158
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That's very negative. You don't know until you try. It's all very well us all sitting back waiting for others to make the first move, but life isn't like that.
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Old 13th Sep 2018, 9:00 am   #159
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

I have the IC260 permanently mounted under the shelf in my 'office' and I'm often pleasantly surprised by the number of SOTA peeps who visit the area. I get a good path north and east (Central Scotland; County Durham) with just 10 Watts into the homebrew 'Slim-Jim'.

I go through phases, though, and so don't have it on all the time.
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Old 13th Sep 2018, 9:10 am   #160
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I am averaging one contact every two days on 2m fm which is far more than I have done previous to last year when I actually started listening to 2m again. You can go all day without hearing a soul but my rig is in the office and I am not of course in there all day.

If I was to answer every CQ call I hear that would increase the number but sometimes I am busy doing something else, if I spent all day in here no doubt I would make a few more contacts. There are still a few stations about.

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