[SMCARA] August/September General Upgrade Class

[Tom Shelton]

Now that Field Day is over and done with, its time to think about upgrading...   With this in mind I have scheduled rooms at the Lexington Park and Leonardtown libraries on Tuesday evenings from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM.  I already have 10 people who have expressed an interest.  If you would be interested in this class, please shoot me an e-mail and I’ll add you to the list.  The class will cost $25 and will include the ARRL Study Guide (a $29.95 value).  

I’m also looking for people (General and above) to help teach this class – in the overview below, take a look at the lessons and let me know if you’d like to present any of them – I’ll provide the outline and slides for each lesson.

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 

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