Michael Burnette - The Fast Track to Your Extra Class Ham Radio License

The Fast Track

to Your

Extra Class

Ham Radio License

by Michael Burnette, AF7KB

Covers all FCC Amateur Extra Class ExamQuestions through June 30, 2020

All original content Copyright 2017,Michael Burnette. All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may notbe reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expresswritten permission of the publisher except for the use of briefquotations in a book review.

Smashwords Edition

The Fast Track To Your Extra ClassHam Radio License is now available as an unabridgedaudiobook.

Over 22 hours ofinstruction.

Available from major online audiobookretailers

For Darrell Cutter, John Hanley, Sr., andJohn Hanley, Jr.

Passionate teachers, brilliant minds, loyalfriends, living demands for excellence,

It has been a privilege to have knownthem.

Thanks to all those who have served as soundingboards or sources of information that got me through some of thetough spots of creating this program and there were plenty. Manythanks to Eric Nordin, AD7BF, Curt Green, N7OBI, and Tim Pozar,KC6GNJ, who threw in some much appreciated tech support. DennisCarpenter, KB7DY, graciously and generously got this train back ontrack numerous times by catching errors.

Some incredibly special thanks to ColleenEdwards, KI7DRS, who has taken on the giant task of turning theFast Track programs graphics and all -- into material thatvisually impaired people can use to get their licenses through theCourage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute's HandiHam program. Thatproject has included Colleen training with the National Federationof The Blind to be certified as a Braille transcriber. That's oneamazing example of serving the community.

Thanks, too, to all of you who wrote to ask,So . wheres that Extra program? Your letters have meant a lot,probably more than you imagine, and were a source of energy to getit done.

And especially to my wife, Kerry, KG7NVJ,who, with boundless good humor, has patiently endured countlessmuddle-headed rants about obscure topics in which she had littleinterest while I worked out concepts and ways of teaching themduring the course of creating these programs. Then she bravelyserved as one of the "test pilots" for the program by going andtaking (and passing with flying colors!) the exams.

About The Author

I believe that in every person is a kind ofcircuit which resonates to intellectual discoveryand the idea isto make that resonance work.

- Carl Sagan

Welcome, and congratulations on your decisionto pursue your Extra Class ham license. We have quite a journeyahead of us, so get your commitment and curiosity dialed up to11.

The Extra Class license officially the"Amateur Extra Class License" brings with it privileges tooperate in the "VIP rooms" of the ham bands, where the bands areless crowded and the propagation is often better. I think for mostof us, too, there's a certain pride in having accomplished gettingthat ticket. Those benefits aside, my hope is that you'll take theknowledge you gain from this program and assist other hams and yourcommunity with your expertise.

I think it is safe to say that unless youalready have a broad and deep education in electronics, ham radiooperations, and math, there are parts of this journey you will findchallenging, and that this will not be a weekend-long jaunt, noreven a week-long excursion. While I've done my best to geteverything boiled down to plain language, there will no doubt be afew concepts that just don't quite click for you the first timethrough. I hope you won't get discouraged when that happens Idoubt anybody gets all of this the first time through.

My end goal here is to get you your ExtraClass license, not to give you a high-level academic styleelectronics education. Thats far beyond the scope of the book, notto mention my capabilities. Ive simplified a lot of concepts hereto make them understandable, sometimes at the expense of absolutescientific rigor, so you're not going to be a PhD ElectricalEngineer when you finish this course. This course is a startingpoint, not an end point. I hope youll take your learning here andspringboard off it into deeper explorations of the topics thatparticularly interest you. The good news about that is there aresome great resources in the ARRL collection and elsewhere to dojust that.

Im also starting from the assumption thatyou know nothing more than is covered at the Technician and GeneralClass levels, and Ill even review some of that stuff.

To assist your memory, I'm purposefullyrepetitive on many topics that's to help move things from yourshort-term memory to long-term memory. Fair warning, too, I'm notabove using history, science trivia, stories, and corny jokes andillustrations to help stuff stick in your head.

Plan on spending at least a month, probablytwo, with this material. There's an accompanying audio program(available on line) so you can also be gaining knowledge andreviewing while you commute or work out, and I think that audioprogram really helps with the memorization parts of the exam andthere are a lot of things to memorize.

The audio program consists of over 22 hoursof instruction, so you can see we have a lot of ground tocover.

There are 713 questions in the Extra Classquestion pool. We'll go over the right and wrong answers for eachand every one 50 chapters worth.

The challenge of the Extra exam lies not justin the number of questions, nor in the breadth and depth of thetopics covered. In addition to those factors, the answer sets oftencontain four answers that all sound fairly reasonable. Let's faceit, many of the questions on the Technician exam had one rightanswer and at least two, often three, that were easily eliminatedwith a little common sense and some basic electronic skills. (Idon't know about you, but some of those wrong answers were sowildly unlikely they made me laugh out loud.) The General examstepped it up a bit, often giving you one or two wrong answers thatlooked pretty likely. Still, test skills, Ohm's Law, and somecommon sense would get you a long way with that exam.

The philosophy of the Fast Track series hasbeen, from the beginning, that the best way to pass an exam is toactually know the material. (Shocking, right?) On the Extra exam, Idoubt you'll pass by being a clever test taker, nor by being amemorizer of answers. I'll point out a few useful answer patternsand give you some memorization aids, but they won't get youthrough. This exam really does demand you not only know thematerial covered, but that you master many of the skills behindthat material.

To be frank, there are a few topics on theexam you are highly unlikely to ever use or even encounter again,unless through some bizarre chain of circumstances you join a groupof humans who migrate to another planet, all technology has beenlost, and they're depending on you to possess one key bit ofinformation to recreate the semiconductor or something. I suggestwhen you run across these that you maintain your sense of curiosityand/or humor and think of these topics as, perhaps, "interestingtech trivia."

Before I drive you off into another hobbywith this part, let me point out that for the curious mind, there'ssome joy in learning this stuff. My hope is that by the end ofthis, aside from your new ticket from the FCC, and maybe a newExtra class call sign, you'll have a richer, deeper appreciationfor the people and concepts of the science behind our hobby, and,indeed, behind much of our modern world.

Once you really get the science behind how itworks, there's an elegance and beauty to even a simple circuit likea regulated power supply. The average person looks at a tool likethe Smith chart and thinks, "Huh. Funny lines on paper. Lookscomplicated." You're going to learn about it and in the process geta glimpse into the mind of a man who created a work of genius.