My Experiments & Travels Through the Airwaves

CTS Admin

Site Mechanic
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I have tested/passed the Technician Amateur Ham Radio license and am currently studying and planning to take the General and Extra test soon..

Some things that got me this far,...

I fully recommend buying the study guides from: (Not an affiliate link)

Since I recently passed my Ham Technician test, I found that the qrz.com website (upon them verifying your new FCC registration and eligibility requirements) will offer you a new handheld radio setup, charger, battery, antenna, programming cable, software, for only $21.95 plus shipping through GigaParts website. So I ordered it. I mean why not. Right? It is better than the Baofeng radio's I picked up last month according to the test administrator and others.

I received the Explorer QRZ-1 radio. It seems like a nice little handheld. I did want to make a comparison to the Gaofeng radios I already picked up on Amazon. There have been many suggestions that the Gaofeng radios are pretty dirty on the transmission end. Since this is the modern days and I can snag a decent handheld touchscreen spectrum analyzer for less than a couple hundred bucks, I grabbed a TinySA Ultra+ from Amazon.

Early results (assuming I have measured correctly), suggest yes, the Gaofengs do show a few of harmonics well above FCC allowable levels. The QRZ-1 was very clean and very low readings well within allowable limits. To be honest, I am new enough to have only recently watched a video that talked about spurious emissions.
 
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Still studying quite a bit for the next two tests. I have less than two months to soak up as much information as I can on the subject.
 
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