Any Ham Radio Operators Here

[wa2ise]

The FCC stopped requiring people to take and pass a Morse Code test for even the Extra class ham license a few years ago. It's all written tests, electronics theory, and radio rules.

For the General and extra they may ask questions on which HF bands would allow (via the ionosphere) world wide communications. 80 and 40 meters are similar to the AM broadcast band (nighttime long distance skywave), 20 meters more or less round the clock long distance, and 10 meters, during sunspot peaks, daytime worldwide comms, but dead at night. When the sunspots are at minimum, 10 is dead all the time.

They used to merge rules knowledge and theory into the same question, like "You have a linear amplifier, power supply provides 800V to the output tube, what's the max current you can have?". Used to be hams were allowed a max of 1000 watts of transmitter power, that combined with power=volts x amps, would get you an answer of 1.25 amps. Oh, that's an over-simplification, but back in olden days the FCC specified how to measure your transmitter power like this. As hams had access to simple meters but not fancy RF power measurement equipment. A reason for a power limit was to keep rich hams from putting up 50,000 watt flamethrowers that would make life impossible for other hams on the bands, and the neighbors. Make a level playing field.