…I’ll have your HAM darling, I LOVE it.

I passed my HAM Technician license exam on Saturday. I finished it in something like 10 minutes and aced it. They practically forced me to try for the General as well, which I did… and bombed (50%). I didn’t even think I would bother with the General, but now I’ve got to pass it so I started studying today. 

After the test I took the kids for a walk in Muir Woods (the test was in Mill Valley). It was pouring rain, but we had a ball splashing in the puddles and doing the treasure hunt. After the kids got worn out we loaded back into the car and headed over to the Ham Radio Outlet in Oakland (by way of Blue Bottle) to pick up my new set. We got an iCom IC-7000 with an AH-4 antenna tuner and a Signalink sound card modem (for email).

It took about 4 hours from when I got back to the boat until I was on the air (RX only) trying to bring up the SSB Nets. We are in a marina which is a notoriously poor RF environment. Hopefully we’ll be able to listen into the manaña, sonrisa, and amigo nets tomorrow morning.

The next step is figuring out the ground plane system and relocating the tuner closer to the antenna. More (extra-geeky) posts to come on that!