In the past, the ARRL has provided us with a Windows-based program to generate exams from the question pool. The program worked well, but each time there were any changes to the question pools (which happens on the 1st of July in 3 out of 5 years), they had to create a new Windows installer package to disseminate to all the VE team leaders. That in of itself was a pain enough, but for those of us who are Mac and/or Linux folks it became a real hassle.

In today’s newsletter to VEs, I noticed that the ARRL had announced a new version of the exam generations software. When I went to download it, I was pleasantly surprised to find an AIR badge to install the program. It’s an HTML-based AIR application but a lot of thought was put into how it functions. It takes advantage of AIR’s built-in database to synchronize its question pools and answer templates with the latest approved versions as well as periodically checks to see if there are any updates to the program itself–all the things that we love about AIR. Oh, and since it’s an AIR app, it obviously runs natively on my Mac!

I’ve been kind of critical of the ARRL in the past in regard to the applications that they offer for use (some are pretty bad). This one however, really fits the bill for what those of us responsible for printing exams need to do on a regular basis. Hopefully, this will be the first of many applications that they develop on the AIR platform.

There’s something pretty special about building a radio from a pile of parts and stringing a couple hundred feet of wire out through some trees and being able to carry on a conversation with people half way across the country or half way around the world. Even though today the vast majority of radios are commercially built and there are as many antenna designs as stars in the sky it seems, the magic of being able to fire up that radio, tune through the frequencies and have the possibility of talking to another ham in a country you’ve never heard before is pretty special.

There are many “sub-hobbies” to ham radio these days–morse code, computer generated digital modes, satellite operation, GPS-enabled radios and more. One of my favorites is referred to as “contesting”. On several weekends throughout the year, hams from all over the world set aside anywhere from 1 to sometimes 48 full hours to devote their energies to trying to see just how many people in different states, countries, continents etc they can talk to and exchange some small bit of information within the allotted time frame.

Today there is a contest called the North American QSO Party (QSO is short for a contact or conversation). Today’s version is a voice contest only. Two weeks ago a friend and I made a combined effort in the morse code version of this particular contest and absolutely had a blast. We didn’t work the entire 12 hours that this contest covers, but only put in about 6.5 hours. In that time, we made 178 contacts in 34 different states and 3 Canadian provinces. By comparison, most of the top echelon morse code contesters can make 100 contacts per hour.

So, if you’re reading this, I’ll be offline from the “inter-tubes” and online riding the airwaves from about 1:00pm CT for maybe as much as 12 hours (depends on how my derriere holds up sitting in that chair that long).

73 (that’s short for talk to you again soon)
Dan – Amateur radio station N4EA