I am currently a Tech, licensed about 3 weeks ago. I just started my General class one week ago, that goes until the end of March, when hopefully I will pass the test and get my General license. I don't expect the test to be a problem, they're really kind of easy if you take the most minimum of time to read the ARRL textbook.
I like taking the classes here, because they are not just memorizing questions/answers, watching boring slide presentations, and listening to war stories - there is a lot of hands on learning. Last Saturday us students set up a 30 foot portable flagpole, hung some wires in an inverted V, and ran coax back to an ICOM 7300 in the meeting room we have class in. While we weren't able to learn how to fully operate the 7300, we learned enough for our assignments and to get a feel for the radio. That 7300 is one that the club will loan out to people to take home or on vacations to play with. We had some assignments to find what beacons we could, find and tune in some other QSO's and record callsigns and whatever info they broadcast (we were listening only), locate some of the NOAA WX broadcasts, ... things like that. We were using some laptop software to determine where best propagation was, other software to help find active QSO's, etc. I was quite amazed that with our thrown up antenna (which wasn't very pretty!), my lab group was able to pick up beacons from Australia, New Zealand and Japan, ... from Colorado. Very faint, and none of us students know Morse yet, so to identify the beacons they showed us how to use yet another software program to find out what beacon was broadcasting on what frequency at any given moment - so we could do a "look up" of who was sending the beacon signal we were hearing. It would be nice if we could have understood the Morse to identify the beacons ourselves, but learning that will come later. I really like these classes, because anyone can memorize questions and pass the test - then have a license with no knowledge/experience behind it. The classes take you beyond that. I think the tests are the easy part...
The club gave each of us students who passed the Tech exam (we all did) a free Baofeng UV-5R. Not a high end or expensive radio by any means, but at least something to encourage us and get us on the air. I have a friend who has loaned me one of his Yaesu FT-60R's, a bunch of handheld antennas, a J-Pole, some "log-log" (?) antenna he had and said I should try, coax, connectors, etc. so that I can set these things up at my house and get a feel for what they can do. This will keep me busy for a while until I learn more about what I'm doing. I don't want to knock the Baofeng, but the Yaesu clearly beats it in performance and convenience/ease of use. $150 vs $23 though - you're going to have some significant trade-offs at the Baofeng price point.
Eventually I plan to buy an HF rig, but that won't be until after I finish General and get some hands on with the clubs loaner 7300. They actually loan you a complete setup, not just the 7300. Also mounted inside the case with the 7300 is a Kenwood 2m/70cm mobile and a power supply for both radios. In a second box comes a large lithium battery, chargers, a solar panel, a laptop loaded with software, cables, portable antennas - the whole setup you need to begin playing around or do remote support for events. They call it a "Go Box", or something like that. They are building another one of them now. I like the concept so much that I may setup my home rig as a Go Box. The box opens front and back for airflow, and has a panel that brings all the connections from the radios (and power supply) out to an easy to reach location. The one thing that I didn't see in there (but could have just missed it) was a set of headphones with boom mic - I may suggest adding those. They only had the regular mics that come with the radios I think.
I don't plan to go on to Amateur Extra any time soon. General should get me plenty of frequency privileges to learn on. I have heard there are online groups that you can join, send in a copy of your license, and then remotely operate their transceivers over the internet. So you can do some learning and see if you like being a HAM operator before sinking a large amount of your cash into a home station. This sounds like a good idea, but I'll have to do some research to see if these groups are worthwhile, or a waste of money with a crappy environment. But sharing of equipment like this sounds like a reasonable idea at first glance.
I am KE0ZIY for now, and that assigned callsign is a real mouthful. My vanity callsign should be coming through in a few more days, and that one should roll off the tongue much better! I think it's odd that the FCC mandates that your first callsign be assigned by them. You can then apply to get a vanity callsign immediately after it's assigned. Seems like a waste of time and effort to me (a vanity callsign is free these days, so profit is not the motivation). Why not apply for your initial license and your vanity callsign at the same time? But that's not the way they do it. Government agency, why would I expect anything different?
