Farrell and I have been talking offline. The proposed times to run the course would be twice a week on Wed and Thursday from 7pm to 9pm and would consist of 12 sessions. At the end of the course, we will take the examination to get a Canadian amateur radio license.
The cost will be approximately $100 - with that you will get a course study guide and a Baofeng UV5r radio if we are able to get 7+ students. If not then it will be marginally more expensive.
Is there anyone else who would like to attend this course?
Very interested! But I’m not sure the timing works for me.
Would the evening study sessions be for 6 weeks starting next week? That would put the last one on Thursday, July 7th?
Would it be a problem to miss a couple of the nights and self-study instead? The next month and a half doesn’t work very well for me though and so count me in only tentatively.
I’d love to participate except that I host an event every second Wednesday. Is there any way for me to be able to make up for missing 25% of the classes?
Something changed. From the moment I switched on the Baofeng UV-B5 it was clear that engineers in China heard our cries and did something about these crappy front ends. First of all I never lost the signal of our regional 70cm repeater while walking through my house, a trick not even the Wouxun or Quansheng can pull off. Only my Yaesu VX-177 and Icom IC-U82, both expensive mono band HTs, are capable of doing that. Secondly, I never lost signal outside either. That’s not something I can take for granted here. My QTH is known as ‘Intermod Alley’ and for good reasons. Most receivers are overloaded immediately here, making it impossible to listen into any 70cm signal below S9+20.
Sure - if the course goes ahead then I don’t really mind which model we get
I don’t actually have either - so will go with the UV-B5 if that’s
preferred.
How do we raise the awareness of the proposed course to get folks
interested out to VHS and get started.
I would like to call a VHS-ARC meeting to discuss this on this Wednesday
lets day 7:00pm at VHS
Lets go - I will be there Wednesday to get the ball rolling.
Hopefully tonight will launch an Eventbrite sign-up for the event.
There are nowadays many online course notes and considering the push for time I propose we simply plan to get going with online notes and walk through these at each session.
One I like is from Univ of Waterloo https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~ehashman/emcomm-ham-radio.pdf
In line with my original plan we should then also run an exam every month on the last Wednesday for those that think they are ready to attempt it - there is no cost for sitting the exam.
Last time we ordered / supplied a course handbook which costs close to $50 which I am not sure we need. We have a reference copy at VHS-ARC
Radios - If the consensus is for the UV-B5 then we can simply do a group buy for those that want - I would suggest an SDR device is also a useful add-on to get the ‘feel’ of radio.
I am very interested in the course but am not sure how many classes I will be able to make in person, I’m often working past 7 all over the city. If the course notes are online I would be down for kicking in for a radio and signing up.
Also tonight I shall layout the program as to which sections we will do at each session so anyone missing sessions can run thru the notes to catch up in their own time.
Just haven’t had the time to setup the online event but anyone interested can join in. If we get more than 10 people we may have to squeeze in between other scheduled events.