[geeks] Upgraded my Ham license today...

[Mark G Thomas]

Hi,

On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 04:21:01PM -0600, Lionel Peterson wrote:
...
> So for the last few weeks I'd been studying to upgrade my ham license to
> General, and my work paid-off - I passed the General exam this morning!
> 
> Then, at the insistence of my fellow radio club members I tried my hand at the
> Extra exam - which I also passed! I thought they were pulling my leg when they
> told me I'd passed.

18 months ago I studied for my Technician license, then the day I took
the test, for the heck of it, I took and passed the General too. I 
would not have passed the Extra if I had tried that day.

This past Saturday, I took and passed my Extra. I studied for it, and
in fact was obsessively going over the Q&A every free minute for the past
week. Part of why I was willing to drive far for the test Saturday was
I really needed to stop studying and get on with my life. I got a perfect 
score, in spite of my anxiety about simply passing. I had a lot of trouble
with test taking anxiety during timed engineering tests in my college days.

> Hopefully my story will encourage others to consider going for either their
> first license or an upgrade to their current license... It wasn't as hard as I
> would have thought. The ARRL has a free exam simulator on their website, and
> I've got a free General study guide I'll happily send to anyone here
> interested - just contact me off-list.

Lionel's post above was what pushed me enough to order the ARRL Extra 
study guide, then the approaching question pool change in July was what
pushed me over the edge to actually take the test now instead of later.

The "distractors" (wrong answers) on the test generally don't make much 
sense if you know basic terminology and read carefully while taking 
the test.  I deliberately did not study the wrong answers closely,
because I wanted the correct answers to jump out and look familiar.  For 
the math questions, if you know a few things about reactance, decibels, 
and basic circuits, there is generally only one answer that has the correct 
sign and order of magnitude. Since you can get up to 13 of 50 wrong and 
still pass, you could even decide simply not to worry about more difficult
categories of questions.

Mark

-- 
Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com), KC3DRE