Finally a General Amateur Radio Operator

So on 6/27/2010, I finally took my general licensing exam and passed at Georgia Tech.  It only took 6 years to get it.  I had a small two week lull in life and decided to give this test another shot.  About every other year, I'd give it another shot at trying to pass this exam.  I guess this time I got lucky.



How I Passed
Actually, I took it more seriously along with more resources.  I had already purchased the ARRL General Class book and had already gone through it a couple of times.  For some reason, it just wasn't stickin'.  N8KBR had a great nutshell version in PDF format, along with some other resources on the internet.  This was a lifesaver.  The way it was worded, it just started to make sense.  Lessons Learned?  Use as many resources as possible.  I took the reviews I saw on Amazon as gospel that the ARRL book was the way for me to learn and pass.  In the end, use every resource possible to pass.

When I didn't understand terms in the book or the PDFs, I started Googling or Wiki'ing.  For instance, if I didn't understand ARRL's explanation of inductance, I found a college website or Wikipedia for their explanation.  Like I said, I took it more seriously to study, so I put more effort into it.

Finally, I just started going through practice exams to get used to types of questions.

Why This Time?
Funny how I decided to get back into Ham Radio.  I sold my only transceiver, a Yaesu VX-2r, back in 2006, so I haven't done much since.  Sadly, to this date, I've never made a contact...that's for another story.  Well, recently my wife and I were looking into discontinuing our cable service.  We were watching less and less TV and wanted to look into getting the local channels through the air waves.  Based on our location, www.antennaweb.org mentioned that we should get most of the local channels in HD through a Yagi antenna.  That's when I got the ham radio bug.  Why?  I wanted to see if I could build my own HD antenna instead of purchasing one.  The thought of building an antenna started getting me thinking about Ham Radio, and here I am now with a General Ticket.  More to come...