Ham Radio Forum

NewB · Joined: 07 Dec 2007 Posts: 1 Location: North Idaho

Hi I am NewB,
I am very new to ham radio (read I know nothing) I have a book ( ham radio for dummies) But I am having a hard time understanding radio waves Shocked

Anyone who can help me in this mater would be very appreciated. Luckily I have a Dad that is great with technical stuff but when he read the radio wave section in ham radio for dummies his head almost exploded Confused

,
One last question, We are of the grid, we have a battery bank and a inverter but it is not a true sign wave inverter and I am worried that it may mess with a transceiver, does anyone know if that will be a problem?
Thank you for your time, I look forward to learning more about hamming. Wink

NewB

avdrummerboy · Joined: 19 Dec 2007 Posts: 19 Location: Apple Valley

Wow a lot to start off with. Firstly, welcome to Ham radio, we hope to hear you on the airwaves soon. Which license are you going for? I have my extra (I had to do the code test back when I took mine and there is no code test anymore.)

Anyway, to start, a radio wave is known as an electromagnetic wave, meaning that it is part electric wave and part magnetic wave all in one. These two waves travel at right angles to each other as they propagate. When the electric part of the wave goes across an antenna it induces a voltage in it (albeit very tiny.) This then goes down the transmission line and into the receiver. For the purposes of Ham radio, a radio wave has two (three kind of) properties that you should know. The first is its wavelength. This is how we refer to most of our bands. The wavelength is the distance between two successive peaks or troughs. Just think of it as how far apart each individual wave is. The second most important is its frequency, measured in Hertz (Hz; also kHz, MHz, and sometimes THz.) This is technically how many times the wave goes through its positive negative positive cycle each second. The last mostly unimportant (unless your a physicist) part is the speed of light c. This is 186,000 miles per second or 300 million meters per second in free space. The only way this comes into play is in antenna design. c= wavelength times frequency.

Hopefully that helped somewhat. If you don't already own one, get the ARRL radio handbook and if you can the ARRL antenna book. Also a little searching on the internet might help a lot.

As for using a radio off your inverter, is it a square wave inverter or just not a totally pure sine-wave. I know a lot of motors and other things won't work when its a square wave inverter, but if it's not a square wave I would imagine that a linear power supply would be able to take it. Although at first you will probably be using a HT and battery packs.

Anyway, good luck getting the license and we hope to hear you on the air soon. Ask if you have any more questions and have fun in the meantime.
_________________
pk
KD7WNJ
ham radio rules Smile