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Author Topic: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass  (Read 540 times)

G3RZP

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #15 on: July 07, 2021, 11:03:17 AM »

The original G3EDM was Geoff Mills, who in the 1960s and onwards lived in Chelmsford in Essex. He was somewhat active in both DXing and 160m ARDF, and worked at what was the Mid Essex Technical College as a lecturer in the Electrical Engineering Department. He was a member of the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society: I knew him from the METC and CARS. He had one of the first Heathkit solid state transceivers and had a lot of trouble with PA transistors dying! I never had him as one of my lecturers at METC, very few of whom I honestly can say managed to impress me!

He was definitely a nice guy.....
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G3RZP

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #16 on: July 07, 2021, 11:07:09 AM »

BTW Martin,

Having a Full Licence means that if you make a temporary visit to the US and operate under the reciprocal licence, you have basically Extra Class privileges. That makes it worthwhile turning in the KB1WSY call sign....
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G3EDM

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #17 on: July 08, 2021, 07:54:46 AM »

The original G3EDM was Geoff Mills, who in the 1960s and onwards lived in Chelmsford in Essex. He was somewhat active in both DXing and 160m ARDF, and worked at what was the Mid Essex Technical College as a lecturer in the Electrical Engineering Department. He was a member of the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society: I knew him from the METC and CARS. He had one of the first Heathkit solid state transceivers and had a lot of trouble with PA transistors dying! I never had him as one of my lecturers at METC, very few of whom I honestly can say managed to impress me!

He was definitely a nice guy.....

Hi Peter,

I did find out a certain amount about Geoff Mills when researching the callsign. He had a very distinguished ham career. Among other things he was a passionate beekeeper and helped animate a weekly beekeeping net on Sundays, which apparently has continued since his passing.

I have included a biography of Mills on my QRZ profile page, written by his nephew, who is a ham. You can find it here: https://www.qrz.com/db/g3edm.

BTW Martin,

Having a Full Licence means that if you make a temporary visit to the US and operate under the reciprocal licence, you have basically Extra Class privileges. That makes it worthwhile turning in the KB1WSY call sign....

It is unlikely that I would want to operate when visiting the U.S., but yes, I was aware of that interesting quirk. In a way it's not really a quirk: the RAE that I passed in 1971 was roughly equal to the U.S. Extra in difficulty (or maybe even harder!) in my opinion. I will let the U.S. licence lapse, for various reasons. It expires in February of next year, plus the grace period.

I must admit that I have been studying the RSGB exam manual for today's Full licence exam, to try to get up to date! (I may even take a mock exam to see how I fare).

As for my lifelong quest to get on the air, I really am nearly there. Yesterday I installed the telescopic pole that will be the center point of my 40m full-size dipole. Because of local planning rules (I live in the heart of a village, and my house is within an AONB) I will be raising the antenna to a sadly sub-optimal height, but what matters is just to get on the air. I am navigating the permission regime for antennas in the UK -- and will probably seek help from the RSGB volunteers who help with this kind of bureaucracy. Thus, I hope to increase the antenna height in due course, which of course is physically easy because it is a telescopic pole.

Edited to add: Perhaps you remember my Frankenstein-monster regenerative set, built entirely on a huge wooden breadboard? It uses sub-miniature valves and runs entirely on batteries. You helped me a lot with that set, which is the first thing that I've ever largely strung together at my own initiative rather than relying on off-the-shelf homebrew designs. Well, I spent today unpacking that set and putting it back together. For obvious reasons it was largely dismantled so that it would survive the transatlantic passage....

73 de Martin, G3EDM
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 08:00:10 AM by KB1WSY »
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G3EDM

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #18 on: July 08, 2021, 08:13:44 AM »

Here's that breadboard set. Got out the soldering iron and put it back together. I've not powered it up yet, because I'm waiting for the plethora of batteries to recharge: separate battery strings for filament, B+ and grid bias.



73 de Martin, G3EDM
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G3EDM

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #19 on: July 08, 2021, 08:43:33 AM »

Edited to update: the batteries were charged enough so I powered it up. It is what I remembered: it works quite a lot better than the Novice "3 transistor receiver for the beginner" that was my first receiver. Among other things, this much more sophisticated regenerative set has a tunable RF stage (suggested by G3RZP), to isolate the antenna and provide greater selectivity.

Regeneration is set with a combination of a potentiometer and a variable capacitor.

The detector and the AF stage have nice large inductive plate loads. There is a two-tube audio filter for CW. I even built a push-pull final audio stage to work the speaker, or can just use the headphones fed from the previous stage. There are other tweaks too.

Here is an early circuit diagram containing only the heart of the receiver (three tubes) without the bells and whistles. The full version has seven subminiature tubes!



73 de Martin, G3EDM
« Last Edit: July 08, 2021, 08:45:41 AM by KB1WSY »
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G3EDM

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #20 on: August 29, 2021, 07:09:09 AM »

I am now finally on the air for the first, 50 years after passing my UK ham test.

The thread about this is in the "Homebrew" forum (because that's my main passion in ham radio, and my rig is indeed entirely homebrewed).

73 de Martin, G3EDM
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N2EY

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #21 on: August 30, 2021, 08:38:59 PM »

Great stuff, Martin!

It just occurred to me that we have something similar here in the USA.

If someone who holds a current, valid Technician license can show they held a Technician license before March 21, 1987, they can get a no-test upgrade to General.

The Technician was created as part of the 1951 restructuring.

So, someone could have earned a Technician license 70 years ago, let it lapse, and now gets back into Amateur Radio and gets a no test upgrade to General.

73 de Jim, N2EY
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G3EDM

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Re: Am Getting My UK Licence ... Based On 50-Year-Old Exam Pass
« Reply #22 on: August 31, 2021, 09:23:23 AM »

Great stuff, Martin!

Thanks Jim!

I feel slightly sheepish about getting my ticket based on such ancient knowledge. So I did purchase the RSGB's present-day book that you use to prepare for the Full exam. One of these days if I have the time, I will study the book in full, then take one of the mock exams online to make sure that if I took the test today, I could pass it!

Also, back in 1971 I did not take the Morse test (didn't even learn Morse really) which means I could only have obtained a licence to operate on VHF or on Top Band (160m). Back then, IIRC, you would get a G3 for the full licence (if you passed the CW test) or a limited licence otherwise (G8 prefix back then).

I have probably got the detail wrong, but it was something like that. There are still plenty of G8s on the air today. Perhaps they started out with the limited licence, and passed the CW test later. Or, they were grandfathered to Full licences when the code requirement was dropped.

If I am getting stuff wrong a UK ham will correct me here....

This is very geeky stuff but I know you like it!

73 de Martin, G3EDM
« Last Edit: August 31, 2021, 09:28:29 AM by G3EDM »
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