Meet My Study Buddy

This is Lucy my "study buddy".  She's my 7 month old Golden Retriever.  The picture was taken when she was 5 months old, but it's the only decent picture I can get of her sitting still.

Of course being a 7 month old puppy she's not really into studying, I think the problem is she can't figure out where a tennis ball or a rope fit into Ham Radio.  One thing I know for sure, she loves my little handheld radio, well she loves sniffing it when it's not making noise.

Playing with my first radio

So I'm sitting here not really knowing what I'm doing, it's just after 3:30 A.M. (I work nights so I'm up this time of night) and I'm just scanning the airwaves.  So far the only voice I've heard is the weather forecast from the automated NOAA broadcast.  I have heard some Morse code, but since I haven't learned any Morse yet (I'll learn that once I get the hang of everything else) I just let the scan keep going.  I'm also getting a lot of static, I've adjusted the squelch up and down and it's not helping, so I have no idea.

Hopefully I'll hear something soon, I've made two full loops through the spectrum and I'm on my third now.  Oh well I'll keep studying my book, and try to figure all this Ham stuff out, the key is to remember I don't know how everything works yet so don't get discouraged.

P.S. I know I'm not allowed to broadcast since I don't have my license yet, once I can figure out how to do it I'm going to disable the PTT just to be safe, until then I'm being very careful how I hold it.

What's going on here?

I've always been interested in radio, as a kid I for a short time had a CB in my bedroom (until I reversed the connection on the electrical terminals and started a small fire), and I've had two way GMRS radios, and kids walkie talkies, and several others.  Basically I've always been interested in radio.

I deliver papers for a living at the moment and one of the other drivers has had a CB in his van for a while and I've talked about radio with him off and on for over a year.  Then recently he replaced his CB for a HAM and once I noticed the change I asked him about it and we talked about Armature radio almost every night after that.

Then one night he walks up to me and hands me a hand held radio and says go ahead and play with it to see if I was interested (he had locked the PTT so I couldn't talk), then the next night he brings me his copy of Ham Radio for Dummies and I have to admit I've been devouring it.  I guess he's my Elmer now, could be worse it could have been K9QVL Robert Hannsen LOL.

Well after about 5 days of reading I was hooked and went online and bought the second edition of Ham Radio for Dummies, a Baofeng UV5RA, a Nagoya NA-771 15.6-Inch Whip, and a USB cable to program the radio.  I've also downloaded several apps from Google Play including Ham Bands, Repeater Book, Ham Test Prep, Morse Mentor, Ham Boss Technician FREE, and Ham Radio Podcasts, and I used my audible credit to buy the audio book The Fast Track to Your Technician Class Ham Radio License, and I started listening to two podcasts, Ham Radio 360, and Linux in the Ham Shack.  Needless to say I got into it.

So I thought I'd start this blog to keep kind of a journal while I go down this road, it may be sporadic if I don't have much to say for a while but I'll update as time goes on and maybe if other things in my life work out I'll buy a domain with my call sign once I get it and move this over to a hosted site, though I may just leave it here since blogger is free and why not.

And since I never know how to end these "about this blog" posts.