[geeks] Upgraded my Ham license today...

[Lionel Peterson]

Well congratulations! I'm glad my comments encouraged you to 'go for it'.

Like you, I focused on the correct answers and I agree with your assessment of
the math questions - if you have an idea what they are talking about typically
only one answer is even plausible.

Extra isn't as hard as many make it seem, especially the older hams that have
sat on General or Advanced for 10-20 years - they have built it up in their
minds as an insurmountable hurdle...

Lionel

> On Apr 11, 2016, at 9:15 AM, Mark G Thomas <Mark at Misty.com> wrote:
>
> 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
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