Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Irish Call Signs
Options
-
19-05-2013 11:12am#1
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
don't do that. Study hard now, take the exam, you have nothing to lose except 50 eur (or 25, depending on your circumstances)
If you wait till October, the pressure will get you, because all that will go
trough your mind is going to be - "if I fail, the next exam will be in 9 months"
I think this is sound advice. The exam will be a valuable experience either way, you could repeat it in October if necessary and as a repeat candidate you would only pay half the fee, so a "fail" would effectively cost you only €25 more than a pass. You will spend a lot more than that after you got the licence anyway
So I too would give it a try, knowing that you are not perfect yet may actually take some stress out of the whole exercise - but you may still be well able to pass first time if you use your time wisely.
@martinsvi: I'm in the same boat. I have been holding a German Class E licence for many years and now I consider going through the whole process again to convert it to an Irish one since Class E is not valid here. So a lot of work for me too, and the language doesn't make it any easier. But that's how it works and I see it as the most exciting part of the challenge
0 -
Since nobody else picks up on that topic again I will do it
I sat the exam on Thursday afternoon and - although the atmosphere in the room with 13 or so candidates was quite tense - I found that the questions were mostly fair. A few unexpected things popped up though where common sense and educated guessing would have to do. I didn't expect it to be easy, though.
There were five or six questions that I know I got wrong. In one it was asked which one out of four given frequencies was not in an SSB - contest preferred area of the 80m-band. The choices were all above 3.6MHz and I had no clue and think I wrongly picked 3630kHz (3680kHz would have been right).
Two questions referred to different types of amplifiers, the easier one asking (I don't remember the exact wording) which produces the least amount of harmonic distortion (Class A) and another one referred to the time and/or phase angle in which the amplifying stages would be biased in a certain type. I don't remember that one exactly, but I think I got that one wrong.
Another one I didn't get right was the voltage in a 50 ohm dummy load on a 50 ohm feeder line when fed with 100W of rf power. I think the choices were 2V, something in between, 100V and >5000V. I went for the latter choice, but 100V is probably closer to the right answer. I never encountered that question while studying.
The next question I think I didn't get right was dealing with an open coaxial stub at a quarter wavelength, which could work as (a) a low pass filter at the appropriate frequency, (b) a low pass filter at twice the frequency, (c) a notch filter at the frequency or (d) a notch filter at twice the frequency. I now think (c) would be correct.
Some more questions were "interesting", one asking for the best practice when confronted with an accident that involves electricity and where you find a casualty still connected to a live wire.
The choices were like (a) call a qualified electrician, (b) pull the arm or leg of the casualty with an insulated glove, (c) switch off the power and remove the casualty and something else I don't remember. Since an insulated glove might not be readily available and the electrician would take too long to arrive I went for cutting off power myself and removing the victim (assuming the reference was for an accident in the home rather than a power line outside).
Some more questions off the top of my head:
-permitted power level on 1.9MHz (a) 1W (b) 10W (c) 100W (d) 400W. 10W is the correct answer here and this question has been asked before (thanks to Anthony for mentioning it in his blog).
-"G4XXX, this is HB9XXX" refers to a swiss operator calling an english station, I don't remember the other choices given
-55 as a signal report refers to a "perfectly readable, fairly strong signal". One close, but wrong option was "perfectly readable, weak signal", the others were fairly obvious though
-Emission designations were asked for in general, and the correct answer was that the first letter indicates the type of modulation used, the following digit represents the type of modulating signal and the final letter corresponds to the type of information transmitted
-The correct wiring of a mains plug (blue neutral, brown live and yellow/green earth)
-Two of the calculations that had to be done: one involved two capacitors (one fix, one variable) in series and the other one referred to a circuit consisting of two resistors in parallel and another one in series with the first two. I got the first one wrong initially but spotted the error in time I think.
-It was asked what a varicap diode was and some funny answers given like a heat- or light variable resistor or someting. Right answer should be a current variable capacitor.
-One question referred to what should be noted in the log book on an ongoing basis and I think it was the mode of transmission that was asked for. The other choices were details of the equipment, location of the other station and signal reports.
-The first question referred to the circumstances that would allow an radio amateur to transmit messages on behalf of a third party and I think the obvious answer would have been only in case of a catastrophic event and for disaster relief.
-Some more of the antenna questions: one was a schematic of a trap dipole and the question was what the traps are used for. The answer of course was to make it usable on more than one band.
-Similarly another question asked what needs to be done to make a half wave dipole resonant at a higher frequency and the choices were something like to shorten it on one end, shorten it on both ends, lengthen it on one end or lengthen it on both ends. Both ends need to be made shorter here.
-Then it was asked what can be used to match the impedance of the antenna to the transceiver at the trx end of the feeder line. An antenna matching unit it was.
-Then there was the schematic of a dipole antenna with the diagram of "something" over the antenna (high value at the feeding point, low values at both ends), you had to pick from the choices and I went for "current".
-Another question asked what it is good for to have the same impedance in the feeding line as in the antenna, answer here was for the best possible transfer of power.
-Then there was the question on which of four given frequencies a half wave dipole of a certain length would be resonant. I forgot the exact values here, but the answer was quite straightforward.
-A question was asked regarding the radiation characteristics of different antenna types, i.e. which one emits the least directional/most circular radiation pattern and the choices given were three different types of dipole antennas and a quarter wave ground plane, which I think should be the correct answer.
-One question asked for the upper limit of the 20m-band (14350kHz) and another one asked which of four given bands was allocated to radio amateurs on a secondary basis (10MHz).
-Then there was the question on which out of four bands no contest activity was allowed and it was one of the WARC-bands. (12/17/30m, I don't remember which one exactly was mentioned)
-Some more questions I remembered over night: 4 circuits (all very similar apart from the polarity of the diodes) were drawn and the one depicting a full wave rectifier had to be identified
-A mains transformator with 1100 windings of the primary side should give an output of 14V, you had to figure out the number of secondary windings.
-Four sample callsigns were given and the one that violates the rules was to be identified. One ended with a number.
I think there were three or four more that I don't remember now, but I hope the ones I do can help someone preparing for the next exam. As I said, it wasn't too bad and I hope I made it through. I'll come back if I remember any more questions.0 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
Advertisement