Ham Radio Help Topics

08/05/2012, updated 02/29/2024

Out of the immense number of topics that are useful for helping new Ham Radio folks pursue, on the technical side of ham radio, there are a few areas of discussion that are particularly useful and important at this early stage of effort. Perhaps the easiest way to go about this, in this page of helps, is to start by adding those topics that cause a lot of struggle for most of us at the onset. These short presentations cannot possibly be as a substitute for the wealth of good material available, but hopefully they can provide some additional insight into some "simpler ways" of learning these things.

"Db's the Easy Way", without calculators or complicated formulas.

Resistor Color Code in 18 minutes!

So just what is meant by the "Characteristic Impedance" of a length of coax?

What's so special about the so-called "Quarter-Wave Shorted Stub"?

Power Supply Basics, Understanding Various Power Supply Systems and Regulation.

You might find these outlines (in progress) somewhat informative

Interested in CW keyers?

Digital Mode Interface .Home-Brew (a 94Kb pdf file for printout)
Interested in breadboarding your own Iambic Morse Code Keyer? (a 138Kb pdf file for printout)
How the Keyer Circuit works.

Additional Material

Time Constants , Reactance, Imaginary Numbers, Phase Angles, and Impedance

How to quickly learn Hexadecimal Codes

How Binary / Octal / Hexadecimal codes run CPUs

Special Links about Antennas

Commercial Antennas	Construction Projects	Antenna Design	Antenna Theory
GAP Vertical Antennas	Antenna Projects by AC6V	Antenna Design Books	Antenna Theory & Practice
SuperAntennas by W6MMA	ARRL Wire Antennas	Design Your Own J-Pole	Antennas! by W4RNL
Ant. Systems & Supplies	Invisible Antennas, WD4BIS	2 Meter Copper J-Pole	Verticals without Vertigo
J-Pole, Yagi	Building Doppler Antennas	Eggbeater Loop	W4RNL (SK) Ant. Serv. & Edu !!.
Shoestring Antennas	Building Antennas		Antenna Modeling
	Cubical Quad Antennas		Small Beams
	J-Pole Antennas		http://www.uksmg.org/stack.htm
	Copper Cactus J-Poles		Antenna Traps byWA7RSO
	Packet J-Pole Antenna		HF BALUN's by WA7RSO

General Links

EZNEC by Roy W. Lewallen W7EL (AntennaModeling Software)
AmateurRadio RF Safety Calculator (Antenna RF Radiation) {was: http://www.wirelessconnections.net/calcs/rfsafety.asp}
ARRL
Evergreen Intertie (Northwest Repeater Interconnecting System) {was: http://www.EvergreenIntertie.org/}

Morse Code

W1AW CW Practice -- On-The-Air

Morse Code Software - See what AC6V has to offer, and really good links:

Note especially the Morse Code Training Programs

especially recommend CW Player (by F6DQM) and NuMorse, and they will run the the following Data Files very nicely:

Morse Code Helps (FWARC):

CW_Helps_Indexes (Text with 15WPM Sound Bites)

Group Selections-Text (Text Forms of the following Group Selections Code Bites)

"ReadMe" (please)

Morse Code Data Files Here's what I have used for many years for helping folks achieve their morse code proficiency. I originally had it on audio tape, but it works very well with these Morse Code programs as a Data File. It helps by comparisons with those areas that sound so much alike, and how to deal with those difficulties.

Group Selections Sound Bites, are by 8 Selectable WPM Speeds of Full Page Groups of approximately 187 Selectable Sound Bites in each page.

Morse Code Data HTML File (given here as an html, which can be converted to a data file)

For an explanation of the philosophy of these groups.

Initial Difficulties of the beginner and those experiencing difficulty in progress.

"Straight Key" operation made easy.

Learning how to "Copy Behind" in Morse Code.