Bummed

Well, many of you may not know I am a licensed HAM operator (that's Amateur Radio for those who don't know). Never mind that I've never operated a Ham Radio, I'm studying to get the highest level of license, The Amateur Extra. Doesn't that sound cool? And just a tad geeky.

Why, you ask? I'm doing it for the boys. My grandpa and my dad. You see, they both had a call sign that I'm trying to get -- family gets first preference for a call sign after someone dies. The call sign has been in the family since the 1920's. I gotta pass a hard-ass test by Thanksgiving, or my dad's (and his dad's before him) call sign goes out the window, available to the first clown who snaps it up.

Now, I passed the first two levels of the Ham Radio test, no problem. A bit of studying about electronics theory, radio wave propagation, antennas, etc and the licenses were mine. Not easy mind you, but doable.

The test I'm currently studying for is hard. Tres hard. Tres Difficult. Its a 50 question mulitple test with a defined question pool. I planned to memorize the answers from the question pool -- esp important for the really hard stuff.

Now comes the reason for the title of this post: "Bummed." My uncle told me there were 500 questions in the question pool. But I got a little suspicious and decided to hand count them, and near as my count could tell, there are not 500 questions in the question pool, but 800. Yes, I'm bummed.

Here's a sample question:

If a 1-Mhz oscillaor is used with a divide-by-ten circuit to make a marker generator, what will the output be?
A. A 1-Mhz sinusoidal signal with harmonics every 100 kHz
B. A 100-kHz signal with harmonics every 100 kHz
C. A 1-MHz square wave with harmonics every 1 MHz
D. A 100-kHz signal modulated by a 10 kHz signal

WTF? (Obvously I haven't gotten to this part of the study guide yet.)

If you want to try your hand at the Amateur Extra test go to http://www.qrz.com/testing.html and click on "Extra"

Postnote: Yes I will actually use a radio now that I'm not pregnant and after I give all my available "bandwith" (ahh, radio humor) to giving this test a shot.
Postnote 2: My dad passed the Amateur Extra test and didn't miss one question. I believe he understood everything.