Category Archives: learning

Let the real learning begin

14 Wednesday Dec 2022

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Studying for months: Done

Taking practice tests: Done

Showing up for an actual test: Done

Getting a 94% passing grade: Done

Now I have an FCC-issued technician level license and a call sign: KK7JQN.

Things people do with their ham radios: volunteer on emergency neighborhood response teams, provide communications at long-distance running events. Lots of other things get done of course, as the ARRL, the national amateur association notes.

This month, two days after passing the license test and two days before getting my license, I helped out as a scribe at our neighborhood’s monthly communications practice session. It’s a couple of hours of folks ensuring their gear is working and that they can be heard by each other. I won’t say it was the most fun two hours I’ve ever spent. Three of us set up radio and antennas at a high point in the neighborhood under a tent on a rainy chilly night and proceeded to do check-ins with emergency volunteers. By the time we were done, we were cold. By the time we had loaded out afterward, we were soaked. But we added one more layer of radio experience and practice to a group of folk who are prepared to be helpful should a massive disruption, like a subduction zone earthquake or a power outage hit our region.

More fun last summer was supporting the runners at the Waldo 100K Ultramarathon. Of course, back then, I had just begun my studies, and I didn’t really know what I was doing aside from noting runner times at the aid station we supported about half-way into the grueling race. But I got to see how ham operations work, how moving an antenna just a few feet can make a big difference, how seriously hams take transmitting information exactly as they receive it, and how careful those receiving the information are in confirming what they hear.

When I started down this road, I was only doing it because my wonderful partner asked me to. Now I’m excited to begin being a participant in this community.

What’s next? Bring on the actual radio gear.

Keep calm and study on

28 Monday Nov 2022

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Eleven days out from taking the Amateur radio technician license test, the anxiety begins to set in. I’m fairly confident that I haven’t worked this hard to acquire knowledge outside of my comfort zone since college.

Consistent daily review over the past three months of the various categories of information provided in the National Association for Amateur Radio’s manual has given me some small measure of understanding, helpfully supplemented by my sweetie, already a licensed amateur, who also happens to be an electrical engineer.

In my effort to calm the growing nerves I went looking for online guidance about effective study habits to help me over the finish line and I discovered that I’ve been doing many of them all along. Here’s the list:

  • Quiet place, consistent time for study. First thing in the morning, coffee in hand, I sit down with the study guide.
  • Have a goal: I’m studying to pass a 35-question test that requires a passing score of 26 correct answers. The manual lists all of the possible test questions. And the ARRL web site offers practice tests, you can take repeatedly, which I do.
  • Take written notes. When I miss questions on the practice test, I write them down in longhand and then search out the relevant section of the manual for review. Research has shown that writing things down is a good way to help embed concepts in the brain.
  • Stepping away periodically. I’ve been known to push a little too hard. But you can’t push learning, especially in areas well outside your knowledge base. Things come over time. I knew I couldn’t cram at the last minute on this effort. And I haven’t.

Not in my wheelhouse, yet

17 Thursday Nov 2022

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Amateur radio, AKA ham radio, never caught my interest. People fussing with complicated gadgets, raising odd antennas on the roof — someone in Antarctica talking to someone in Alaska — I mean, get a cell phone for heck’s sake.

It might as well be magic for all I understood it.

But I have this amazing partner, Craig Cherry, who likes tinkering with gadgets and who is involved in our neighborhood’s emergency preparedness group. Ham radio, it turns out, is integral to that effort. Last winter he suggested that I get my ham radio license, a process that requires some study and taking a test to show you know your amperes from your ohms and your farads from your henrys.

I dismissed the idea right out of the gate. I couldn’t even tell the difference between watts and volts. And up until a few months ago, I did not care. When Craig asked a second and then a third time, I saw that it was important to him, and since he has been known to visit Canada in the freaking winter with me just because I ask, well, quid pro quo. Also: We live on a river held back by 13 aging earthen dams, the next subduction zone earthquake and accompanying tsunami are overdue, and wildfires have ramped up in recent years. Semper paratus as the Coast Guard says.

So I said, OK.

Then I began reading the study guide. It kicked me back to junior high school days when I was wrapping my head around algebra, the first stumbling block being that letters had, through some strange metaphysical process, become stand-ins for numbers. Frankly, it pissed me off. Learning that doesn’t emerge from one’s own native curiosity and that requires time and effort to absorb, that’s hard.

Learning about electricity, radio frequencies, bandwidths, transmitting, receiving, amateur radio etiquette, FCC regulations, has brought the adolescent me back in spades. I get cranky. I storm around and yell. Then Craig explains a thing. Then I settle down and read some more and another little piece of knowledge embeds in my brain.

One slow step at a time, I am making progress. I do know the difference between current, volts and watts. I do know that farads are a unit of measure of capacitance and that henrys are a unit of measure of inductance and that capacitors and inductors store energy differently. I know enough to pass practice tests about half the time. That is 100 percent more than I knew last April.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke noted once that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Perhaps I will end the year viewing radio as technology, something in my wheelhouse.

Listening pays off

06 Saturday Aug 2022

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Listening to novels, a thing I do while engaging in the tedium of hand quilting, has been instructive for a couple of reasons. The repetition of words stands out after a few hours of listening. One author uses the word “prodigious” as his go-to whenever there’s a lot of something to describe. Another author has his female characters biting a lip or chewing on a lip whenever he wants to show them being pensive.

When I say these word choices stand out after a few hours of listening, I really am listening for a quilting session that lasts about three hours. Note to hand quilters: If you choose a pattern with lots of curves, like the stencil pictured below, you will be quilting for a long, long, long time.

This stencil, about 8 inches by 14 inches, repeats over the queen-sized quilt I’ve been working on since January. It takes me about three hours to stitch one of these panels.

But I digress. I don’t bring up what amounts to a kind of writer’s tick because it represents a flaw in the books. A reader rather than a listener might not even notice. But once I noticed, it did prompt me to go back over my writing project to see what go-to words showed up in my copy. It turns out my characters, whenever they’re involved in difficult conversations are always “looking away” or “looking down” “closing her eyes.” Also there is breath holding and sighing. Oh, the sighing. So the next edit I’ll be searching for some words and phrases and seeing if I can change it up a little.

Regarding the stencil: You lay it down over the fabric and swipe a chalk pounce across it. The chalk penetrates where the lines are. I used Full Line Stencil but there are other manufacturers.

Ups, downs, etc.

26 Tuesday Jul 2022

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I stumbled on a couple of concepts that deserve mulling: performance goals vs. learning goals, described by Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck, and willpower as emotion, described by Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

Dweck’s work notes that learning goals help us work beyond mistakes and failure while performance goals can stop us before our efforts can lead to improved outcomes.

Inzlicht’s research, or my understanding of it, suggests that willpower comes and goes, much like happiness, anger, etc.

This week, I’ll keep learning goals in mind, as I work on the things that have challenged me lately (writing a successful query letter to an agent, for example). Also this week, I’ll recognize that in the face of ebbing willpower (sometimes it’s really challenging to reach for the fizzy water and not the glass of wine), there are strategies to deploy and keep me on track until the willpower circles back around. In other words, not a failure of character, just the normal cycling of my feelings.

For help with the agent querying, I’m delving into the great advice of agent Janet Reid, whose web site is really helpful and whose Query Shark blog is harsh but good education.

Nowness

05 Tuesday Jul 2022

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Last month Craig and I camped and hiked at Humbug Mountain State Park, which, though close to the highway, has a secluded feeling. A fine trail winds through big trees to the top of the mountain and while its elevation gain is 1,700 feet over three miles, the switchbacks make it seem less arduous than I’d expected. We hiked at the right time for flowers: wild iris, rose, rhododendrons, bleeding hearts, and many others I have no names for.

Being in the moment on that hike proved easy. The periodic views of the Pacific Ocean through the fir trees, the spring flowers, the sound of birds. So much visual and audio stimulation to keep the mind in the present.

Day to day, I find myself stuck in thoughts of what has happened and what may be about to happen. I’m not dissing the past and the future, but I have this feeling that savoring now shouldn’t be reserved for special times.

I wonder if my daily activities can include the kind of nowness of the hike. Maybe there’s value to paying attention to the folding of the laundry, the doing of the dishes, the weeding of the garden.

The farm boy who discovered Pluto

26 Tuesday Apr 2022

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Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farm boy in the 1920s who couldn’t afford college so he just did what he could on the farm in his spare time: Built his own telescopes and took meticulous notes about his night-sky observations. He sent his notes to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff AZ when he heard they were hiring and his notes got him a job. The Lowell Observatory is a private institution founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell, son of wealthy Massachusetts industrialists and educators. Lowell was convinced another planet beyond Neptune influenced its orbit and Tombaugh, using the 24-inch Clark refracting telescope (pictured above) found Pluto in 1930. It turned out that Lowell was wrong about Pluto’s influence on Neptune. Eventually Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in Kuiper belt. But the Clark telescope is still a remarkable instrument, still functional and available for viewing the night sky by the likes of you and me. Lowell invites folks up to the observatory on clear nights to get a closeup view of stars, nebula, galaxies. At our visit there this month, Craig and I saw the Orion Nebula using the 126-year-old Clark telescope. We also got introduced to the stunning Cigar Galaxy. Exciting research continues at Lowell. This is why we travel.

Steep learning curve

05 Saturday Feb 2022

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Want to know what’s really hard to hand stitch on a quilt? Tight circles.

This was a thing I might have guessed from my various adventures in embroidery. But I didn’t think about it when looking for a stencil to guide my quilt stitching. I have friends who are expert quilters that I could have checked in with. But I didn’t. Just forged ahead because I liked the swirly design.

This image shows about 9 inches by five inches of work. It took me three hours. I am making a queen-sized quilt. Hopefully I will get faster as I go.

Another thing I am learning. Quilting needles are freakishly tiny. You can embed them in your thumb (and all other nearby fingers) before you even halfway realize you are drawing blood. I guess I am now in the suffering for my craft mode.

Keep getting up

14 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by in Exercise, learning, outdoors, Random

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I am the perpetually novice skier. I’ve been downhill skiing since I was 19. I’ve been cross-country skiing since I was 28. But years (heck, decades) can go by between outings. Every time I do go, the downhill slope looks as daunting as the first. Then I ski down it and a hint of muscle memory returns. Then again, a bit more. Every time on cross country skis, I freak out when the trail turns and drops. I can turn. I can descend, but not simultaneously!

I was feeling somewhat sad about this. How is it I am six decades along in life and still skiing only the easiest of runs. But after a three-day weekend of doing both kinds of skiing, I realized, this is me. Perpetually novice skier. So I will just enjoy all the best parts of it and laugh about the tumbles.

The best parts: three days in a cabin on a lake with the amazing Craig and the wonderful Isaac. Beautiful mountains, stunning night skies. Occasional encounters with people in an actual sleigh being pulled by a muscular clydesdale. Feeling that muscle memory return.