Free amateur radio lessons
Complete lessons from the Foundation, Intermediate and Full courses: watch the video, read the key points, try the quick check and the worked calculations.
▶ 2:51Electricity: current, circuits, Ohm's law, power and batteries
Conductors and insulators, what a circuit needs, Ohm's law, power in watts, polarity and batteries, with simple calculations.
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▶ 3:31Antennas: types, polarisation, patterns, gain and ERP
What an antenna does, polarisation, the common antenna types, radiation patterns, gain, and how to work out ERP.
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▶ 2:56Making a contact: listening, calling, phonetics, reports and logs
How to find a clear frequency, make a CQ call, use the phonetic alphabet and suffixes, give a signal report, keep a log, and behave on air.
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▶ 3:10Resistors: series, parallel, potential dividers and source resistance
Ohm's law with milli and kilo, combining two or three resistors, the potential divider, tolerances, and why a battery's voltage drops under load.
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▶ 3:28Receivers: sensitivity, selectivity and the superhet
Crystal sets and direct conversion receivers, sensitivity and overload, selectivity and its limits, the superhet and its intermediate frequency, detectors for each mode, and AGC.
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▶ 3:40Propagation: ground wave, the ionosphere and VHF
Ground, space and sky waves, polarisation, the ionospheric layers and what changes them, MUF and LUF, skip, hops, fading, long path, sporadic E and multipath.
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▶ 2:41Reactance, phase, impedance and coupling
Phase in inductors and capacitors, calculating reactance, capacitors for coupling and decoupling, RF chokes, and impedance in series CR and LR circuits.
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▶ 3:16The superhet in depth: mixers, image frequency and IF stages
The superhet and double superhet, mixer products, choosing the local oscillator, calculating the image frequency, high and low IFs, and IF transformers and gain control.
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▶ 3:21Operating: split frequencies, 5 MHz and 472 kHz, ITU regions and CEPT
Why stations work split, testing for interference, the 5 MHz and 472 kHz band plans, band plans abroad, the three ITU regions, and operating overseas under CEPT and HAREC.
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