Your local radio club, you tutors and fellow students will likely be full of advice and assistance to help get your first station set up. As you take your first steps into the hobby of amateur radio try and bear these advisory points in mind
1. Don't be shy or fearful of making mistakes - The most experienced amateur was new once. Granted he may have forgotten this, but it is none the less true. We all make mistakes, the secret is to learn from them. Make notes in your log to refer back to, and review them regularly.
2. Arrange a schedule to contact some of your fellow students - You are much more likely to be relaxed talking to people you already know. Easy relaxed contacts such as this will help you practise your skills and reduce any lingering apprehension you may have about actually going on the air.
3. Don't try to slavishly follow all the advice you are given - This is particularly true of equipment and antenna selection. Buying your equipment is much like buying a car or clothes. What's right for someone else may not be right for you. Get as much advise as you can, then make up your own mind.
4, Enjoy yourself - This is a hobby after all, not a job.
You have reached the end of our Foundation Licence course material. We, the Amateur Radio Courses group, would like to wish you good luck and welcome you to the hobby of amateur radio. We hope you have found this course material useful. Should you decide to progress further to Intermediate and Full licence level, we produce similar course material for these licence classes also.
All the site contents are produced by a team of radio amateurs on an entirely voluntary basis. If you would like to join the group and assist in the production and expansion of this endeavour, please contact the project coordinator using the link at the foot of the page.
All comments, good and bad, are very welcome. We need your feedback to continuously improve the site content.
A variety of extra information can be found on our site including projects to build equipment and antennas. All this information is available by download too for burning onto CD. These may be distributed freely providing you adhere to the conditions set out in the copyright notice.
We are indebted to the Radiocommunications Agency for their kind permission to reproduce copyright material within this and our other courses.