[SMCARA] Still Looking for help...

[Tom Shelton]

In reference to the General Upgrade Class...

I currently have 13 people who are interested in the class and expect a few more (if you are interested, it’s not too late to sign up)...  

Boz has volunteers his expertise in digital communications to teach that portion of the course.

If you have expertise in antennas, solid state circuitry, General and/or Mobile HF operations, propagation, advanced math, etc..  (see the full course syllabus below) and would like to teach that portion, please let me know.  You won’t be on your own – I’ll provide the slides for each lesson and will help you prepare as best as I can.

That said, I do have a bit of an agenda.  I’d like to get a few more people involved in teaching and increase the number of classes that the club presents.  The ultimate goal (long term) would be to have enough instructors to put on 3 or 4 Tech classes every year, and 2 General Upgrade Classes.  That is simply too much for me to handle on my own, but if we had 4 or 5 instructors (myself included), the workload would be spread enough not to be a burden on any individual.

An overview of the class with dates and locations follows:

Note: Each lesson will be an average of 30 minutes (some a little longer, 
some a little shorter) and will be broken into 3 parts:
a) An overview of what you will need to pass the General Class Exam
b) A review of the questions from the General Class question pool 
associated with the lesson
c) Other “nice to know stuff” – not associated with the questions and as 
time allows...

August 2nd, Leonardtown Library:
1) General Class control operator frequency privileges; primary and 
secondary allocations
2) Phone operating procedures; USB/LSB utilization conventions; procedural 
signals; breaking into a QSO in progress; VOX operation
3) Sunspots and solar radiation; ionospheric disturbances; propagation 
forecasting and indices
4) Station Operation and setup
5) Reactance; inductance; capacitance; impedance; impedance matching
6) Resistors; capacitors; inductors

August 9th, Leonardtown Library:
1) Antenna structure limitations; good engineering and good amateur 
practice; beacon operation; restricted operation; retransmitting radio 
signals
2) Operating courtesy; band plans, emergencies, including drills and 
emergency communications
3) Maximum Usable Frequency; Lowest Usable Frequency; propagation
4) Test and monitoring equipment; two-tone test
5) The Decibel; current and voltage dividers; electrical power 
calculations; sine wave root-mean-square (RMS) values; PEP calculations
6) Rectifiers; solid state diodes and transistors; vacuum tubes; batteries

August 16th, Lexington Park Library:
1) Transmitter power regulations; data emission standards
2) CW operating procedures and procedural signals, Q signals and common 
abbreviations; full break in
3) Ionospheric layers; critical angle and frequency; HF scatter; Near 
Vertical Incidence Sky waves
4) Interference with consumer electronics; grounding; DSP
5) Resistors, capacitors and inductors in series and parallel; transformers
6) Analog and digital integrated circuits (IC’s); microprocessors; memory; 
I/O devices; microwave IC’s (MMIC’s ); display devices

August 23rd, Lexington Park Library:
1) Volunteer Examiners and Volunteer Examiner Coordinators; temporary 
identification
2) Amateur Auxiliary; minimizing interference; HF operations
3) Power supplies; schematic symbols
4) Carriers and modulation: AM; FM; single and double sideband; modulation 
envelope; overmodulation
5) Antenna feed lines: characteristic impedance and attenuation; SWR 
calculation, measurement and effects; matching networks
6) Basic antennas

August 30th, Lexington Park Library:
1) Control categories; repeater regulations; harmful interference; third 
party rules; ITU regions
2) Digital operating: procedures, procedural signals and common 
abbreviations
3) HF mobile radio installations; emergency and battery powered operation
4) Digital circuits; amplifiers and oscillators
5) Frequency mixing; multiplication; HF data communications; bandwidths of 
various modes; deviation
6) Directional antennas

September 6th, Leonardtown Library:
1) Speech processors; S meters; sideband operation near band edges
2) Receivers and transmitters; filters, oscillators
3) Specialized antennas
4) RF safety principles, rules and guidelines; routine station evaluation
5) Safety in the ham shack: electrical shock and treatment, safety 
grounding, fusing, interlocks, wiring, antenna and tower safety

September 13th, Leonardtown Library:
1) Quick Review
2) Practice Tests


Tom Shelton, AB3IC

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