Episode: 3505
Title: HPR3505: A DX with Hotel Bravo 9 Hotel November Tango
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3505/hpr3505.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 00:42:10

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 355 for Friday the 7th of January 2022.
Today's show is entitled, at the X-Width Hotel Bravo 9th Hotel November Tango and this
part of the series, HAM Radio, it is hosted by Benir and is about 48 minutes long and
carries a clean flag. The summary is, can be a 7K and Benir HB9H&D talk about getting your HAM
tickets in Switzerland.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today we are going to do one in the HAM Radio series. No, we're not talking about bacon.
We're talking about amateur radio, HAMs, dramatic actors, HAMs, see how funny that is.
Radio as in, it's about moving on the airwaves unlike Hacker Public Radio, which is more about
moving ones and zeros via an RSS feed, but I digress. In this series, I want to interview various
different people around the world and various different regions about getting their exams.
What's an exam you ask? Well, in order to be able to transmit, not receive, in most countries,
local, curiosity, wills apply, in order to be able to transmit, you need a license from
your local government, whoever that happens to be. And in order to do that, you need to prove
a level of competency and you need to pass an exam. Now, the exam varies from country to country
and the idea of this series is we will talk to people who ideally have recently done the exam
and we'll talk to them about the requirements of passing that exam. And joining me this evening
live from Switzerland is a good friend Benny. Benny, how are you doing? Hi, yeah, I'm absolutely fine.
But I think for today, we should introduce me as Hotel Bravo 9 Hotel November Tango,
because that's my call sign I got a month ago. I just passed the exam at the beginning of October
and got my fresh call sign like on the 28th of October, I think.
So, now you, you're what's your call sign again with me again?
Hotel Bravo 9 Hotel November Tango. Now, somebody listening to that outside of here
might not be able to, might be able to derive some information about the call sign,
because they're supposed to be unique globally. And in order to do that, the first part of the
call sign is typically allocated to a particular region. So, is that the HB part?
Well, yeah, in this case, basically the HB 9 is the country part, but it's only HB which
relates to Switzerland and the 9 relates to the level of the exam I took. So we have two different
types of call signs, which is an HB 3, which is the zero entry level exam and HB 9, which is the
set exam. I'll let you explain what what's up this. And we also, this is not strictly correct,
because there is also HB 0 and HB 0 is Lichtenstein, so that's not Switzerland.
So, let's cover some of the stuff there. For example, my call sign is P8, about a 7k kilo
echo in November. P8 is the French for Peve, which is lowlands, which describes the Netherlands.
And the 7 is the current block that they're allocating. There's within the Netherlands, when we
talk about that, you will find out more information about that. And typically the last three letters or
two letters, depending on the region, identify the amateur in question. So the last three digits are
your unique, are unique to you. Is that correct? Yes, exactly. In Switzerland, we just get random
digits. Actually, they just follow the alphabet. So the only way to get a two digit or two letter
sign is to be a amateur association. Then you can also choose the name. There is, for example,
well, for example, the local, the local association here is HB 9 CF. So that's, I don't think they
chose to CF, but it's just a two letter, two letter call sign, or after DHB 9 at least.
Okay, excellent. So you were mentioning that there are two level of exams. If you're from the US,
you might be aware that there are three different levels. And in UK, there's also three different levels.
So in, but in the Netherlands, there is only two. There's a novice and entry level. So what's
it like there? You mentioned there's a lower level and a higher level that is equivalent to the
sub. Yes, I think the way you explain it is in the Netherlands, it's more or less the same thing.
It's a novice exam where you are limited to certain frequencies and a certain level of power.
So you're not, on most frequencies, you're allowed to send with 100 watts or on some you're allowed
to send with 50 watts with the entry level or in novice exam. And then there is the septic
equivalent, which is the HB 9 exam, where you can use all the frequencies and the maximum power
that is that is allowed by law in Switzerland, which also depends on the, on the frequency.
So the frequencies tend to be divided up and correcting your every monitor. I,
I am very new time to radio as well. And if I make any mistakes, please correct me
in ideally by doing, you know, the show or joining us to, to improve this HB radio series.
So our goal here is to try and encourage people to do the exams so that they will pass.
So Benny, why didn't you just, you went straight and did the sept one. So the sept exam is a harmonized
exam around the European Union and beyond. The European region, I guess, would be a word.
And what it means is that it facilitates if you want to come to the Netherlands, for example,
you could use PA forward slash HB 9, HNT forward slash PP. So you could still use your own call
sign, but you would prefrex it with the local country that you're in. And one thing I noticed
about ham radio is they're very much into knowing where you are. And it struck me as odd when I
started, but then in order to know about propagation and distance location is a very big thing in
ham radio. So is that kind of, does that give an idea of what the sept thing is?
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good explanation. Well, at least for the limited knowledge I have.
I mean, I think it's a European thing, right? So it's basically valid in most European countries
and some other countries that have agreements with European countries. But you can't just go
anywhere on the planet and use your call sign. So you have to check whether either you're
in the sept area or you check whether your country or the country you're traveling to allows
people from your country to use your call sign. If it doesn't, then you can't use your call sign.
So I'll do another show about sept or if somebody wants to ping me about doing another show or
wants to submit a show about sept, we can do that and go into details. But for now, it's like a harmonized
harmonized exam, exam that says, well, if you've got a sept equivalent in Switzerland,
then you can come to Ireland and you can broadcast there. And that actually allowed me to
to get a call. If you permanently move to another country within the sept region, you can then
swap your call sign. But that's that's something for another show.
You didn't have to take another exam. So you didn't just swap the call. All right.
All right. Yeah. And you don't actually swap it. You get another call sign. So I have
got, sorry, just one second. Actually, I've got my
ham license in front of me to make sure that I always remember my call sign during this show. So
yeah, you haven't, I haven't actually used a radio ever as such due to long complicated
reasons, which I'll go into in another show. But so the idea with the sept licenses is that
the idea I think with a whole ham radio licensing per region is that it tells other
administrations, the minimum level that you're asked, that you're competent enough to be able
to operate in that particular region. Would you agree with that statement?
Well, it's a statement that this is the goal of the sept license, or is the statement that
the sept license achieves this goal? Because I agree with the fact that this is the goal of the
license. But considering the exam, I took, I'm not fully convinced that the exam I took showed
a certain level of competence. And you could, you could do the exam by just learning a lot of
questions by heart. And that's it without, without knowing anything about about electronics or
radios. So my other call sign, the call sign that I earned was G5 Ken, so
a golf 5 kilo echo in November. And that's a G is a great Britain, I presume. And the five
series is assigned to full amateur licenses. So in the UK, they have foundation, intermediate
full. And again, there's different restrictions placed on you until you get the full license. But
then that's equivalent to a PA 7 in the Netherlands. And then of course, equivalent to a HB, HB9,
HB9, yes. So, but it also means that if you're going to, for example, America on an on an
expedition or something and want to bring you radio, even though the might not recognize your
certificate, they, it carries a certain amount of weight with it, the making licensing easier
for you, I imagine. And I would also say that the purpose of the licensing in general is
to set a minimum level of knowledge that if you're aiming a technical talk at people that are
amateur radio enthusiasts, that you know everybody should know this amount of stuff. That's,
that's at least what I got coming from the exam. Would you agree? You seem to disagree with that
given the Swiss exam. I don't disagree. I think if you put some effort into actually learning the
stuff you take the exam on, it's definitely easier to pass the exam. And of course, then you have
a certain level of knowledge that you, that you trained. So, but I think it would be possible to pass
the Swiss exam by just learning questions by hard or, or learning patterns of question solving
by hard. But, I don't think, I don't think a lot of people do this. I think because most people who
take the, the ham radio exam are genuinely interested in, in radios and ham radio. So, I think,
well, for most people, it works. So, what was the, are all the exam questions published?
And can you tell me about the exam process? So, can you say, can you just tell me,
somebody knows nothing about amateur radio, the living in Switzerland, where did the start?
Well, let's say, I, I pretty much did this because my, that the main reason why I got into this is
my brother told me, well, I'm, he did, he did this spring, he did the novice exam. And he told me,
well, I want to do the full exam, I want to do the set license. And I need someone to,
to learn with, or to train with me. So, would you do the license with me? So, I just agreed,
without knowing what it, what I got myself into. And I, basically, I downloaded a program,
which is called ham trainer, which is sadly a Windows software, which I ran with wine, it worked
with wine. So, it's fine. And it has a database of, it's not, it's a database of the published
questions, but it's a database of published questions from earlier exams. And those questions are
very close to the actual questions that were asked in the exam. So, very close as in, they just swap
numbers. And, and basically the hope that the pattern you have to use to solve the question is
exactly the same as the pattern you used in, in one of the questions you, you trained. Of course,
it's, it's a database of like a couple of hundred, we're like 500, 600 questions. So, it's a lot to
learn by heart, but it can, I think it can be done. Yeah, we build up the familiarity.
And that's something I found quite interesting is that it varies from location to location.
In the Netherlands, for example, the exams while being done in Dutch, obviously, are also
the exam papers are published afterwards. So, you can download every exam that has been
passed in the past. So, that's a good thing. The bad thing is, you're required, it might
be a bad thing for you, Benny, giving you a profession, it might, they don't publish the formulas
that you, you'd be expected to know when you need to remember them. Whereas in the UK,
the questions are kept secret. And they, but you do get a formula sheet that you can refer to.
You, you don't know, it doesn't tell you what the formula is, it just gives you, here's the formula
and you need to be able to apply it. Well, I think it, I'm not sure whether this is fully
correct, but because I didn't check all the sources of the documents I got from my brothers.
So, I think most of them are from, as with ham associations and not official documents from
the state, but you do get, you do get exam questions and answers. Like, it's not, I think it's
not all the previous exams, but it's like a set of example questions and example answers,
but it's just, it's just giving you the answer. It's mostly not giving you the,
the full solution. It's just like, well, the answer is this number and that's it. And then for
for the exam, you're allowed to bring a formula book and they're, they're formula books published
by different associations in Switzerland. And if you use one of those formula books,
some, they're not allowed to put full solutions into the book, but in my opinion, some of the
formulas they put in there are very close to, to full solutions. Basically, you just, you just
replace the letters with numbers and that's it. You don't have to understand the thing you're
doing. Well, you have to know how to type it into calculator, but that's it. So, this formula is
for this type of question. I don't know what this type of question is.
Yeah, even, even for questions with different steps of calculation, like, what, where you have to
have, well, I don't, I don't remember. There was like a thing was for, I never mind. It was,
but like, it required several steps of calculation and they just gave
every step for this exact case from, from the, from the example exam question. And they even did
this for three different questions, which basically required the exact same formulas, but sometimes
you had to transform the formula mathematically a little bit in a different way than in the other.
You had to solve for, for another value than in the other question. So, they gave,
in the formula book, they gave both versions of the question. And then, of course, in the exam,
it would be one of the two versions of the question, another third one you wouldn't expect.
Okay. Did you have, do you, I know we were talking about a lot of exam questions that were
related to maths, but I found that, did you find that there were a lot of other questions about
safety and about looking up the band plans and stuff like that? What, what, what was the breakdown
of questions? Well, actually, it's what the exam has two parts. It's, it's, each part
is 20 questions, but the first part is significantly shorter, time wise. And, and also,
you don't have to calculate anything. The first part is just regulations and, and safely, mainly,
like, safety regulations and frequencies you're allowed to use or looking up frequencies.
And the second part is more the technical part. So, it's basically, it's, it's 20 questions
each for each part, but the first part, the regulations part was only, I think, 20 or 30 minutes.
And the second part was 75 minutes, I think. But in both cases, you would never need
to full time. So, I was, I was on with the first part in, in five minutes, and with the second
part, like in, in 15 or maybe 20 minutes. And I went through all the questions twice.
Did you, what did you do to prepare for your exams?
Basically, I took a laptop on holiday with the ham radio trainer. And that's more or less
all I did. Yeah. I had a couple of sessions. Sorry. You didn't follow any courses. You didn't do any.
Well, yeah, there was, there is a book. Yeah, that's true. There is a book geared towards the
German exams, but the theory, the theory contained in the books is pretty much what you need for
your Swiss exams. You just, you don't, you don't go through the example questions in the book,
because they're geared towards a German exam, or quite different from, from the Swiss question.
So, basically, I went through some of the theory, the first, the first, like half of the book.
And then went on to, to learn, to train questions. And whenever something occurred that I didn't
understand, and that I wanted to know more about, I, I read up on this specific topic. And then
I did a few sessions with my brother, but we basically did exactly the same thing. We just went
through questions, we didn't understand. And then either one of us did understand the question
and explained it to, to the other one, or we went on to look up the information we needed.
So, I'm not sure whether this is the best way to do this. It's definitely a good way to pass
exam, but maybe not the best way to gain knowledge. Yeah, I'm looking here at the,
at what they, or SGB, the Radio Society of Great Britain have, under their license, under their
set license, they have license contributions and radio stations for the nature of radio,
types of licenses and call signs. You need to, you're supposed to know about operators and
supervision, nest, operators inspection falls down, attended and all control operations,
how set and international things works, how to look for information in the license schedule.
Then there's the technical aspects in section two, which is the fundamental theory, information
about power, reactive components, AC theory, digital signals, transformers, tune circuits,
arrangements, semiconductor devices, cell power, cells and power supplies. Then section three
is transmitters and receivers. So we have transmitters, transmitter concepts, transmitter
architectures, oscillators, oscillators, sorry, frequency multipliers, microphone amplifiers,
of multilers, RF power amplifiers, transmitter interference, receiver concepts, super-hats,
super-hatsural dying concepts, RF amplifiers, external pre-ampifiers, demodulation,
automatically in control, SGR trim, its measures in receivers, transceiver, and then feeders,
an antenna section where feeders balance types of antennas, standing waves, antenna machining,
its radio propagation key concepts ionosphere, sorry section five is propagation, so
radio propagation key concepts ionosphere, phf and above, other features,
then section six is EMC electromagnetic compatibility, EMC concepts source of interference on
their effects, roots of entry, filtering and remedial measures, station design and
antenna placement of general principles, station design and antenna placements for mobile
installations, social aspects and testing, then section seven is operating practices and procedures,
which has good operating practices, procedures, band plans, special events, and section eight is
safety, electricity, working with RF, lightning, working with mobile and portable, section nine is
measurement of construction, so measurement itself, then decibels, then components, and that's it,
so how does if that's the set license in the UK, how does that compare with what you have to study?
I would say most of the topics were covered in our license two, maybe not the part about
how ham radio is organized or the practical part, so I wouldn't I wouldn't get any questions about
how to set up a antenna or how the social structure of the ham radio associations of Switzerland is,
I wouldn't even know what to say the first time I'm holding a radio because it's everything is
very theoretical, I know all the I know all the Q codes but I don't have when I took the exam I didn't
have a single example how to use one of the codes, I knew what they what they meant but I basically
didn't know how you would actually mention one of those codes on the radio, if this, if you.
Yeah exactly, I don't think passing the exam is sufficient to make you a ham, it gives you a
lot of solutions, I think it's quite similar to the analogy I have on my own head is like an IRC
channel you don't just barge in and start talking, you sit there and knock for a while and
have a listen and then kind of introduce yourself very delicately and then yeah it's a little
different in the world for that region. I imagine having been a complete ham to radio virgin here
now, so I'm desperately trying to look up the set syllabus, I imagine it must be somewhere if all
the other ham to radio stations or amateur radio organizations are basing their minimum requirements
of the interpretation of what a set license is then it must be available somewhere.
I mean most of the of the regulations part is I would imagine very very country specific because
there are different regulations and also the safety part in what I'm not sure in other countries
but in what's around the safety part was covered in regulations, so it wasn't like if you want to put
an antenna on your roof, what do you have to do to do this safely? It was more like if you put
an antenna on your roof, what's the regulations are there to make sure you do this in a safe way,
so yeah basically. I mean the result is exactly the same thing but it's not like practical knowledge,
it's more like well this is what the law says and that's what you have to do.
Yeah exactly it's taking consideration of this one. When I was doing my exam
there were a few tricky questions where they were asking two things at the same time
about remote operation or and the remote operation was one of the things but they coupled that
in with the so they get the call signs of various different people and asked was this person
allowed to transmit over there so it required understanding the call signs and the required
it required knowing two pieces of information that you were given admittedly but you
needed to be able to consolidate that. Are the questions phrased like that or are they just
quite clear you know what do you do in the bus? You have an antenna and you want to mount us
is it safe to do so? No I think I think some of some of them in the Swiss exam are
well some of them you have to especially in the regulation section you have to read the question
closely and think about what they mean that the most well in my opinion quite picky example
for this is they had a question where they said well during a connection how often do you have to
transmit your call sign and then the two of the answers were one was well at the beginning
and then every 10 minutes and the other answer was every 10 minutes and the correct answer was
every 10 minutes because the question stated during a connection and not yeah exactly at the
beginning of a connection right so the of course at the beginning part is correct at the beginning
of every connection you have to transmit your call sign but since the question said there is
already a standing connection this wasn't correct answer yeah and that is primarily why I didn't
want to do the exam in the Netherlands because my level of you really do need to understand the
language to a native that of a native in order to be able to pass the exam and they say that's not
a trick question personally I think it is yeah well with this example question I just gave I
I think it's a trick question it's yeah just doesn't trick question it doesn't make sense in
any other way to ask this I mean especially considering that one one of the other example questions
was when you make a connection how often do you have to transmit the call sign and then the correct
answer is at the beginning and then every 10 minutes because they just in the question it says
you make the connection it's not already there so look it's absolutely tracking people into
picking the wrong answer correct and that's an important point to to make about the exams that
at least I felt was that it doesn't matter at the end of the day if you pass you're going to pass
if you you know you might get you might get you barely scripted through and then become the
best amateur radio antenna maker in the entire world the thing is just to get your license and
from then on you don't take it away that is a question do they take your license away what are
the licensing requirements in Switzerland do you need to pay for your license do you need to renew it
well basically there are two things that are different so I have to have to look this up
what what I've got two basically good two papers one is just the paper that says I did the exam
and this is the one they can't take away again so when when you pass the exam you get the paper well
you can you pass the exam and you can get a license whenever you like and then as soon as you get
this you apply for a license and the license is valid for one year and you pay a certain amount
every year you want to keep the license and if you if you don't pay anymore if you don't want
a license anymore you're not allowed to to use the ham right you frequencies anymore but they won't
give away your call sign ever well I don't know whatever means yeah but so if you if you like 10
years later if you decide well I want to get into ham right you again you will get your old
call sign you had 10 years to go you will get it back and you don't need to reabuck for the exam
no that the exam you took is still valid you just have to apply for another license which you will
obviously get because you passed the exam like 10 or more years ago yeah okay very good that is
actually another interesting point you mentioned at the beginning that you need a license to
transmit on ham frequencies actually in Switzerland you need a license to listen to ham radio
it's not there is no there is no exam involved it's a license you you just get from from the
authorities but you have to get a license to be allowed to listen to ham frequencies
how how could they ever possibly know it's got no idea i'm not sure it's not not a lot
not a lot but i mean i think the main point is the main point is you're not allowed to
own a device that can receive ham frequencies without this license so i think i think when you
when you buy when you buy a device you have to prove that you have this license
actually i'm not sure i'm not sure whether i should tell this here publicly but a friend of mine
actually bought radios he ordered radios from china which were designed to send and receive
on ham frequencies and actually the authorities turned up at his door to check for his license
and he sadly he didn't have a license so he had to hand in the devices
oh that's not hard so it's definitely worth getting a license before you buy something
also if you if you try to buy a second hand device in Switzerland you will all the seller will
always always ask for your license because the authorities and check well he's it's basically
his duty to check your license otherwise he's not allowed to sell you the device and he can be
sued for selling the device to someone who doesn't have a ham radio license even even if you sell
the device privately oh cool that's that good information to know and that is that is again here even
though you've got a separate license it doesn't mean that i can humble into Switzerland for example
and just set up my rate i need to obey whatever the laws are in Switzerland as a visitor which means
i need to read the ban plans i need to read the licenses i need to it's a lot less paperwork than
if i was coming from america or somewhere but there's still a on onus upon you that not only do you
need to obey the terms of your own license in the country that issued it but you also need to
obey the license terms of the country that you're in yeah absolutely so main thing is not the panic
the second thing is why did you get involved why did you want to get an amateur radio license
this is probably the first question i should have asked but maybe by the end of this series i'll have
it down well i basically more or less already answered this question because i never planned to get
into ham radio and never um basically wanted to do this it was just my brother fault he just
told me well i want to someone to train with with me and i was like well all right let's do it
it's basically the story behind this is my brother and i used to work in the same place
but then i quit and now we don't see each other as often as we did and then we then we tried to use
some of the of the radius of work and frequencies you can use freely but he wouldn't get through to my
place on those frequencies or at least with with the power that's allowed and that's another reason
he told me to get into ham radio to be able to talk to him and now he can we can talk to each other
on on the radio yeah um well telephones are boring no okay i mean
yeah i was also told there is this thing called the internet or something yeah yeah i'm
it um still i think it's boring it's it's a lot more fun standing at the window because that's
the only place i have enough reception to get to understand my brother and and talk to my brother
using crappy crappy audio and sometimes not understanding him because some interference is
just fun yeah i i think ask a hundred hands while they get into ham radio and you'll have 200
answers very good what else do you think we should be asking in this uh you know go ahead
well the other thing it's it's not the reason why i got into ham radio but it's something my brother
used to convince me to get into ham radio he told me about sota which is summits on air so i'm
i'm a mountain climber and i like getting on top of summits and this is basically the
combination of this and ham radio so you that it's a game where you climb a mountain and then you have
a thing you have to make four connections direct connections so not that we're not that we're a
repeater to different people from from the peak so then the peak counts as activated for you and you
get points for for the peak so i i i i would imagine this is not something people in the net the
lens are in too but it does exist on this remote the climbers exist there's rumors that people have
managed to climb a hundred two hundred meter mountains over there there was there was a story in
Switzerland about how hundreds of years ago Switzerland didn't have mountains but a lot of tulips
and the Netherlands have mountains but Switzerland didn't want the tulips and Netherlands the Netherlands
didn't want the mountains so they just swapped yeah so what else should we be asking in a series
like this what else would people be interested in knowing anything i think one thing that's
worth mentioning you you mentioned it shortly in a question is that even though i even though i
didn't attend any courses i just trained the questions it might still be worth getting
finding an association that offers of offers preparation courses for for the exams
maybe not not even mainly to prepare for the exam but to get to know people and to get inside
information i mean one of the reasons why this worked out for me that well is my brother did one
of those courses for the novice exam and he got a lot of inside information and a lot of documents
he shared with me it would have been a lot harder to to do the exam with basically just training
with the ham radio trainer and reading a book because you don't get all this this inside information so
if you want to at least in Switzerland i would imagine it's the same in other countries if you
want to pass the exam in Switzerland it's a lot easier if you get into contact with your local
association or other local harms just find a way to talk to people and they will also have access
to equipment and they can there's at least in my license there's the ability to have
you know not people knew people ought to student on license people to exchange greetings so you
get a feel for how a radio is set up so part of the reason i happened even used a radio yet is
because i feel i happened on that and i once locked down as over again i'll nib over to my
my almer so to speak and have him basically helped me with my first contact and setting up
radio and setting up setting up stop making sure the radio that i do have doesn't emit
um spurious on few spurious frequencies and that i'm following logging stuff that i need to log
et cetera et cetera et cetera so yes good advice get involved with the club good advice go to a
go to a training course if you can find out and that yeah actually is uh sorry go ahead
over yeah i wasn't i wasn't just going to agree nothing else super uh it's a good
a good overview of how we're going to continue with the series so if you're in another country
and have done the exam recently the last i said four to five years um can you get in touch with us
please and we'll use at least the experience that we've had of doing this
um interview with Benny here about um interviewing you and finding out about your country you
find out more about various different aspects of amateur radio because eventually what i would like
to do is uh take the set license um the requirements of the syllabus there if i can never find it
and if it is available for public use then go through each of the items and cover each of those
items as a show so that you're never going to be able to get everything from HPR even if we did
all the shows because the individual requirements in the country differ so as you said um Benny
there you would need to know locally that you're not even allowed to buy a radio prior to having
a license that's something you need to know by attending the course reading the local information
so that's what we're trying to get out here there will be links in the show notes uh Benny's already
provided them to me uh for how uh uh for what what what have you sent me well basically those are
links to most of the things i mentioned during this um this episode it's the official links to the
regulations from the authorities it's there is a link to the to the documents containing the
example questions there is a link to the ham radio trainer there's this windows um
applications application that works fine in wine uh well there is actually one sorry i have to
mention this there is one thing that didn't work in wine and this was font so the omega sign for
for resistance didn't work and the beta for for transistors for for the um what do you call it um
what's the English word what do what do transistors do um i'm probably going to amplify yeah so
the rate of amplification exactly that's it um and at the beginning i wasn't able to do to answer
any of the questions regarding um transistors because i just didn't know what the the black box
meant there because the the application just showed a little the well the box you always get if
a letter isn't contained in a font contained in a font so yeah but apart from this when i
figured this out it was what's easy to do very good and i think there is also a link to a
this german book i mentioned which covers the theory for the german exam and there you don't have to
purchase a book it basically exists online so the link the link goes to the online and i think
in germany you have to know that it's somehow called level e and level a and level e is what we
call novice or hb3 and level a is the hb9 so i call it is so is the novice level what i'm
alpha is the whole absence yes and the books the books uh based on each other so there is no way i
at the beginning i tried to read the book for the septic exam and it didn't work because it's based
on the other books so you have to you have to go through both books and what else yeah
yeah i think that's about it for for the links yeah with the sept thing they have harmonized the
full level but they have not harmonized they um enter the next level so some countries only
have two levels some countries have three and they're wanting to introduce three levels
this is my understanding that they are wanting to introduce the three levels so the first one
is done and the second one some countries will recognize novice in it but by written permission
so it's not close to the website and enter your search it's you need to contact them and then
they will they may on certain circumstances allow you to operate temporarily in a
way so it's no one task yeah i think now that you mentioned this just something came to my mind
i think that's just something i heard and it's not like confirmed confirmed information but i heard
that they are going to change how the exam works by the end of this year so whatever i told you
might not be correct by the end of the year so that's another reason why you have to get into touch
with with local hams and talk to them because you you never know what changes they introduce to
licensing yeah okay Benny thank you very much for taking the time to do this and it's a good start
to the to the series again if you've done your amateur radio exam in the last five years
please get in touch and even if you're busy with the process at the moment that's absolutely fine
please also get in touch so we can ask you what it's like in your area anything else you want
out yeah that's fine thank you for for doing the show and if you ever need if you ever need a co-host
for another ham radio show just just let me know even even if i'm unable to
provide some information i can still ask like stupid questions or something like this
excellent thanks Benny and tune in okay thank you for another exciting adventure here on Hacker
public radio
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