don_surf- Getting Started with KH8WW
- FCC CORES and the Licensing Path
- Studying with Anki
- Building Exam Decks
- Building Vocabulary Decks
- Our Linux and SDR Setup
- First Signals and Early Lessons
- Learning Through Everyday Radio Signals
Getting Started with KH8WW
I’ve made a career out of computers, had intensive electrical training, and picked up some communications experience along the way. A visit from amateur radio operator KH8WW (https://www.lral.lv/kh8ww/index.html) gave me the push to start putting those pieces together—and finding the gaps between them.
Radio brings a familiar collection of problems: hardware, software, electricity, configuration, and troubleshooting. But it also brings a vocabulary that can make an otherwise understandable explanation feel like starting over.
Our first stop was the paperwork.
FCC CORES and the Licensing Path
We found FCC CORES (https://apps.fcc.gov/cores/userLogin.do), the Commission Registration System used to obtain and manage an FCC Registration Number. Creating that account only starts the administrative process.
Amateur conversations, public broadcasts, and weather reports offer an accessible introduction to the radio activity around us. We’re still a ways from transmitting, but listening gives us plenty to explore—signals to recognize, ideas to test, and a community to learn from.
The licensing path has three classes available to new applicants: Technician, the entry point; General, which expands access to the high-frequency bands used for many long-distance contacts; and Amateur Extra, which provides the full set of U.S. amateur operating privileges. Technician is my first target.
Studying with Anki
For studying, I turned to Anki (https://apps.ankiweb.net/#downloads). It’s a flashcard application built around active recall and spaced repetition: try to retrieve an answer, assess how well you remembered it, and revisit it over time. That gives me a practical way to fit study into short sessions.
Building Exam Decks
That led to a Claude Code project for building amateur-radio Anki decks: jrf/anki_amateur_radio. The project generates decks from the published examination question pools and provides ready-to-import files for all three license classes. The project also includes diagrams for questions that need them.
After the first study session, another problem became obvious. The exam language assumed a working knowledge of radio terminology. An answer could explain one unfamiliar term using two more unfamiliar terms.
Knowing some electrical theory didn’t automatically tell me what operators meant by SSB or CW.
Building Vocabulary Decks
So we built a companion glossary, then rebuilt it around prerequisites. It now has 244 cards, including 67 new foundation and practice cards. Electrical building blocks come first, followed by waves, frequency, wavelength, and the ways a radio signal carries information.
Before introducing single sideband, the cards explain a carrier, modulation, and sidebands. Before continuous wave, they explain Morse code and switching a carrier on and off. Acronyms get their full names and plain-language explanations.
We also added the relationship between band names and frequency:
Wavelength in meters ≈ 300 ÷ frequency in megahertz.
At about 21 MHz, that gives a wavelength of roughly 14.3 meters—within the region conventionally called the 15-meter band. The rounded band name isn’t an exact measurement, or an antenna-length requirement. Its just a rounded mathematical reference for a neighborhood of frequencies. Frequencies go up, and band measurements go down.
That distinction helped connect the numbers on the screen to something physical.
Our Linux and SDR Setup
My practical beginners setup is a Linux computer, a HackRF One (https://hackrf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hackrf_one.html) software-defined radio, and an antenna. SDR++ (https://www.sdrpp.org/) handles tuning, displays signals, and produces audio. For digital reception, a virtual audio connection sends that sound into WSJT-X (https://wsjtx.github.io/) for decoding.
First Signals and Early Lessons
The first phase produced some real successes. We received and decoded amateur digital traffic, and I began connecting patterns on the display with messages appearing in the decoder. We also spent plenty of time sorting out audio routing, tuning, and settings to get things to work, or work better.
After the visiting operators left, reception became much less impressive. Attempts at weather radio and local FM broadcasting haven’t yet produced reliable results. Antenna placement, the surrounding environment, and the receiving setup are still part of the investigation.
Learning Through Everyday Radio Signals
That gives the next stage a purpose. I want to learn through familiar signals: broadcast FM, weather broadcasts where receivable, marine voice, aviation voice, and amateur digital activity. Each offers a different lesson in tuning, signal width, antennas, or decoding.
The plan is to change one thing at a time, observe what happens, and turn the unanswered questions into study material. It is also to take study material and take some of the low hanging fruit to turn it into practical tune in exercises .
KH8WW’s visit got me started. Now I have a receiver to experiment with, a study routine, and a growing list of things I can explain a little better than I could last week.
