Going for My Amateur Radio License
2024-06-27 - [53] 4:8
After about 12 years of wanting to get my amateur radio license, I have decided to finally just go and get it.
Why wait 12 years? (bit of a gender/deadnaming rant, sorry about that)
The only issue I had before was the legal name and address needing to be registered, and I didn't feel like having my deadname registered to do a hobby I would enjoy. While everyone knows me as Vi and have known me as Vi since at least 2012/13 (depending on when I came out to the specific people), I didn't have my name changed legally, due to costs to apply for a name change, having to have the name change announced in a local paper, and having to go to court and **hope** that the judge wasn't having a bad day. If after all of that work, the judge decides "no" for whatever reason, the multiple hundreds of dollars for the filing fee is just gone. After my state finally decided to implement the ID requirements for the REAL ID law, it also became a LOT more stressful to get an ID. Anyone who has had a name change, even in the case of marriage, suddenly needed to bring the full paper trail proving name changes.
Over the last 7 or so years though, I have become very apathetic in terms of the subject of gender and name in relation to myself in particular. I'm not sure how much of it is out of it has been trained and how much of it is me discovering myself more. I just don't experience gender and don't care to experience gender. I don't use third person pronouns to talk about myself, and as long as someone isn't being malicious, I have gotten to the point where I really don't care what third person pronouns people use for me. I also don't really care what name is used for me as long as it's not malicious and it's consistent enough for me to understand that I'm being addressed. There is a friend of mine who calls me "Nick" because that's the name that pops into their head every time they see me. They're incredibly consistent about it, so for them, I **AM** Nick. There are even some folks in my town that call me "Ruby" or "Reuben" because I solve Rubik's cubes and that name came to them in a non-malicious way.
Because of my general apathy towards my gender/name, I have gotten to the point of not really caring if my deadname is registered in an FCC database in relation to a hobby I wish to pick up anymore.
Which licenses am I going for?
For the next in-person test session in August near me, I plan on going for my Technician and General licenses. While I could also study for the Amateur Extra license, I feel it's more personally appropriate for me to get my General license for a few months and understand the artform before getting my Amateur Extra license. It's one thing to memorize a test and the answers... it's a completely different thing to understand WHY the answers are what they are. I'll probably go for Amateur Extra in the November test or sometime next year.
Test prep
I was incredibly amused as soon as I learned that the FCC gives you all of the test questions and answers IN ORDER. If you get question T1A01, which is "Which of the following is part of the Basis and Purpose of the Amateur Radio Service?", the 4 multiple choice answers are always "A: Providing personal radio communications for as many citizens as possible", "B: Providing communications for international non-profit organizations", "C: Advancing skills in the technical and communication phases of the radio art", and "D: All these choices are correct" and the answer is always "C". This feels like getting the teacher's verison of a highschool textbook.
Because the questions for the 3 tests are handled this way and my solution for things is usually "I'll build a tool to handle that!", it was just a matter of grabbing the questions and answers and building a simple test program. I'll probably release a git repo of my test program soon-ish. I can specify question pools, like "T1-T3,T4A-T4B,G1A" to choose all of the subelement 1 through 3 along with subelement 4 sections A and B of the Technician test and subelement 1 section A of the General test. I can also randomize the questions of the selected question pools. An option to choose N questions from the selected question pools (first N questions if not randomized, otherwise a random N questions with no repeats if the questions are randomized) is also incorperated. The last important input of the program lets me decide if I want to do a test or not. In the case of a test, only 1 question is asked at a time and I have to input A, B, C, or D. If it's not a test, then all of the questions are printed out from the specificed question pools and an asterisk is placed next to the correct answer.
My study process has just been to print out a section (for example: T5B), learn the answers, then do a randomized test with all of the questions of that section, then if the section wasn't "A", I will do a test with the entire subelement. After I get through a subelement, I will do a randomized test with every subelement I have learned through.
Because of the **in order** nature of these answers for each question, I'm running into a strange issue where I'm answering a little too quickly based on the order of the answers rather than reading the questions... That's technically fine, because a correct answer is a correct answer, but I will probably force myself to read each question before answering soon. This issue is a big reason why I want to wait on the Amateur Extra license, so I don't just memorize my way into having a shorter call sign without having much if any real knowledge.
What will I do with the license?
Honestly, due to costs of equipment, likely not much for a while. I might ask around about handhelds that are on a relatively shoestring budget that don't make other operators want to murder me because of inadequate RF filtering. It's just important to me that I have the licenses in case I want or need to use these radio bands for whatever reason in the future.