About

I'm Forty-something, a software engineer with an electronics background, and single.

I've always been interested in Electronics - my father was an electronics engineer and I inherited it from him I guess.

I had always been put off doing the Ham Radio Exam, because

• It took a year of evening classes
• It was expensive (I thought)
• I'm more a digital electronics guy, rather than analogue electronics
• You had to learn morse
• I had enough expensive hobbies without needing another one.
• I didn't know much about it

A friend of mine, Ken G7OAH, encouraged me to do the newly announce Foundation Licence course - it only took 2 Saturdays and he reckoned I would breeze through it. So I went down to Portsmouth College, did one of the first Foundation Licence courses and (mostly) breezed through it. I did struggle with the 5 wpm "Morse Appreciation", but I got my first callsign - M3JJN.

The Foundation Licence allows you to "get out on the bands", HF & VHF with low power using off the shelf commercially available equipment and kits with various restrictions.

So having got a licence, I joined Fareham & District Amateur Radio Club. But I could not operate their station unsupervised as I had only a foundation licence, nor could I supervise or operate the JOTA station we did with Gosport Scouts. For that I would need a Full Licence.

At the time anyone could do the Intermediate or Full Licence exam, but shortly there would be a requirement that you had to have passed the Intermediate Licence exam to get a Full Licence, and to have passed the Foundation Licence exam to do the Intermediate Licence exam.

The college were offering a course for the Intermediate Licence with a follow-on course for the Full Licence. The idea being that if you fluffed the Full Licence, you would need the Intermediate Licence pass to do a resit. So I did both of those courses and breezed through both exams. I got my Intermediate (Class B) callsign (2E1JJN) after passing that exam so that I could get on the air with more power whilst I was doing the classes for the Full Licence.

So I now have 3 callsigns, M3JJN, 2E1JJN, M1JJN.