I can’t believe how fast this year went, it just flew by. My biggest failure this year has been Amateur Radio. I posted a year ago that my goal for 2008 was to finally get into it but never did. I got my Technician License back in November 2005 but have never pursued the hobby beyond that, I haven’t even been on the air even once (I do have a transceiver). Well that’s going to change. Seriously.
Hmm, my last post was 11 months ago.
Well I’m a little off on my January goals for getting back into amateur radio. I never did anything. But I have a new interest and will pursue interest in this hobby.
My 2 year subscription to hamtestonline.com expired on November 21. This site offers online training for all US and Canadian amateur radio licenses. You get access for 2 years for $50. For the 3 US licenses, this is cheaper then buying the 3 books available. I have sadly wasted this sub as I rarely ever visited the site. With my new interest I can renew for another 2 years for $30 and did so earlier today. I will give myself until the end of 2008 to get my General and Amateur Extra licenses but plan on getting them much sooner.
I also took my Yaesu VX-7R radio out of the box it’s been in shortly after I got it in Aug 2006. It was charged once, played with, never transmitted only listened. I left the battery in the radio while in storage. I fired it up a couple days ago to find the battery is shot. It will not charge and a call to Yaesu technical support confirmed my suspiscions. A new battery is going to be ordered, but it’s on backorder untilk Dec 17 so I’m in no huge rush to get it ordered yet. It is an aftermarket battery but provides 1600mAh as opposed to the 1400mAh of the OEM Yaesu battery, so it will last longer.
That´ś it for now. Stay tuned for regular posts and progress reports on my license upgrades.
I ordered a couple books from Amazon.com (the ARRL books for the General and Amateur Extra exams) on the 13th and they shipped the 21st after a delaed shipping notice. It went out 2nd day DHL and I was supposed to have it on the 23rd. I tracked it yesterday afternoon after falling asleep for a couple hours and noticed it was DELIVERED (at 7:06am it arrived in Lisle, IL and and 9:41am was DELIVERED to the same location! It was now 4pm. I had no package, there was no “missed delivery” notice on my front door, I don’t live in Lisle, and it was signed for by someone I never heard of.
So I call DHL and they told me they had to look into it and get back to me. Well this is fine and dandy, it was already 455pm and I had to work at 10p so I kindly let them know I was supposed to be sleeping and if they could get any info now. They did and after several minutes on hold said my package was apparently accidentally grouped with a bunch of other Amazon.com orders and yada yada yada. I was told they still need time to look into it and would call me back. I said that’s fine, just leave a message since I’m going to be sleeping.
Well I got up for work , DHL had called, and their message said they are trying to recover the package from the post office. (I know DHL is a big USPS partner, I usually get Amazon orders from the postman.)
I’m not sure what this really means. Are they trying to recover it so they can personally deliver it? Or get it back to properly get it to me via the local post office? Who knows.
How can this get better? Because of the holiday weekend DHL is closed Monday! That’s right Tuesday will be the earliest I get a status of any kind and a possibly delivered package.
I’m just glad this was a couple books for me and not a Christmas present for niece or nephew although I was looking forward to reading them this weekend. At least I still have the www.hamtestonline.com site to use. I still wanted to have the books for hard copy reference.
This was the free shipping offer from Amazon too so I can’t be to mad I paid for this error on their end. I am curious though what you get when they fail to make their guaranteed delivery time. I’ll find out when I call Tuesday.
I have no idea where to begin with my first radio. It will be a dual or tri-band handheld transceiver since a desktop unit is not possible right now (due to outdoor antenna requirements). If any fellow ham’s see this and can recommend a nice starter HT it would be greatly appreciated.
I checked the ULS today and my license was granted! I am now KC9ILU. Next step is to get my first radio and work on upgrading to the General class. That requires 5wpm morse code and a written exam.
I finally got around to taking my FCC Amateur Radio Technician license exam tonight. Since I chose to do this for the Independant Study at school so I could continue working I have until December 16th to do it. So what better time then now to get it out of the way. It went well and I passed. I don’t know what my exact score was (35 question multiple choice) but passing is all that matters. I can’t transmit until my license shows up in the FCC’s Universal Licensing System. I was told it generally takes about a week or two.
