Ham radio enthusiasts who help keep the NYC Marathon running smoothly | Hacker News Reader

Ham radio enthusiasts who help keep the NYC Marathon running smoothly

popsci.com

45 pointswglb8 comments

Where's Nextel PTT when you need it?

Happy to see coverage of ham radio volunteers here! The Boston Marathon has a similar volunteer-led program which I've participated in since college [1]. It's such a fun event and a great way to combine technical interests with community service. I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking to join a community of like-minded technical folks. The group isn't what the "old men with radios" stereotype would suggest either.

[1] https://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-provides-communicati...

Quick plug for anyone who may be interested in ham but a little intimidated by the license that’s required. Contact your local ham club or group (I guarantee you there is one). Ours had a fast track to getting people licensed. It amounted to a one day cram course immediately before the technician’s exam (the oddly named entry level license) with a 90+% pass rate. The philosophy is to get people licensed and on board and interested and THEN start learning. It’s kind of a counter intuitive strategy but it certainly got me involved where I wouldn’t have been otherwise.

> 90+% pass rate

It's multiple choice. Probably 90% of the people reading this could pass the tech examine using only common sense. A couple hours on hamstudy.org and you can ace it. There is no reason for intimidation. I passed tech+general+extra just casually poking at hamstudy questions on my phone for maybe 40 hours.

Among other services, the tech license enables 2m and 70cm activity: common mobile radios, in other words. It's good for 10 years.

I wish Canada was like this. Unfortunately even the basic exam here leans into electrical engineering and a bunch of other topics irrelevant to responsibly using a transceiver on amateur bands.

The US technician exam has almost zero relevance to operating a radio, outside of some legal reminders to broadcast your call sign every 10-minutes.

I'll second the recommendation for hamstudy.org. 90 minutes cramming that the night before the exam and I aced the test in 7 minutes.

Yeah I took an in-person class at a ham club here in Canada and the pass rate wasn’t 90%.

I second this. Also, the passing score is only 74%. That's 26 out of 35 on Technician and General exams, and 37 out of 50 on the Extra exam.

The structure of the exam also helps. I'll use the Technician exam for examples. It exam is divided into several sections:

  Commission's Rules (6 questions)
  Operating Procedures (3 questions)
  Radio Wave Propagation (3 questions)
  Amateur Radio Practices (2 questions)
  Electrical Principles (4 questions)
  Electronic and Electrical Components (4 questions)
  Practical Circuits (4 questions)
  Signals and Emissions (4 questions)
  Antennas and Feed Lines (2 questions)
  Safety (3 questions)

Each of those sections is subdivided into groups, with 1 question from each group. So for example the Safety section has these 3 groups:

> Power circuits and hazards: hazardous voltages, fuses and circuit breakers, grounding, electrical code compliance; Lightning protection; Battery safety

> Antenna safety: tower safety and grounding, installing antennas, antenna supports

> RF hazards: radiation exposure, proximity to antennas, recognized safe power levels, radiation types, duty cycle

Each group has a pool of at least 10 questions, and one of those questions will be on your exam.

You can get 9 questions wrong and still pass.

Say you are good on the electronics stuff but aren't so good with rules and regulations. You could entirely ignore the "Commission's Rules" (6 questions) and "Operating Procedures" (3 questions) and still pass.

In that case you would have to ace the rest, so you might want to consider a more refined approach. Look at the individual groups in those sections, and you might find that some of them concern rules and procedures that you will actually need to know and some concern rules and procedures that aren't actually relevant to the things you plan to do with your license. Skip the latter and study for the former.

The practice exams and study questions at most prep sites are using the actual question pools from the real tests, and you can download the complete question pool organized by section and group so you can fairly easily figure out which areas are one where you already know enough to pass. If that isn't enough to reach 26 correct, you can easily see how many additional groups you need to be able to pass and see which ones look easiest to learn to reach that number.

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