God, I took the general radiotelephone operators test about 25 years ago (still have it), and it was loads of tube circuit trouble shooting questions, frequency allocations, antenna stuff.
Both it and the general ham test were easy as stink, because I was actually interested in the stuff. Seems these days, its all totally pointless, they need to ask questions about IC chips, surface mount, software programming, etc. Most radio stuff these days is easier to program than a VCR. Brett N2DTS -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kim Elmore Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 6:32 PM To: Discussion of AM Radio Subject: [AMRadio] Re: Converting old 1.8-4.0 MHz AM Marine Radios I don't have an answer for you, but this sparks a non-amateur boat-anchor question: I recently took (and passed) my Second Class radiotelegraph test. I did this simply because I wanted to, not because I ever expect to be a marine radio operator. And yes, the FCC still issues this otherwise dead license. I also passed the GROL with radar endorsement; I figured I might as well, while I'm at it. Because I'm a 20-wpm-Extra, I was grandfathered for the CW element (20 wpm plain text, 16 wpm coded ciphers). The written test was pretty arcane, asking how to adjust a bug (I used one for years, so I know), how to handle traffic (did that on CW nets, so I had a clue), lots of non-amateur Q-signals, some oddball abbreviations mainly for radio direction finding, and finally a surprising amount of stuff about *regenerative receivers.* Now, this last part got me to wondering: were regenerative receivers made and used commercially in shipboard service within living memory? I know something about them only because my Dad (W5JHJ) and I built some when I was kid. But, when were they produced commercially? And when were they used in commercial service? I can only guess that it was for a short time around the 1920's or so, but I may be way off. My Dad was amused by this, too. Anyone have any good answers? Kim Elmore, N5OP Kim Elmore, Ph.D. University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies "All of weather is divided into three parts: Yes, No, and Maybe. The greatest of these is Maybe" The original Latin appears to be garbled. ______________________________________________________________ AMRadio mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:[email protected]
