Electronics 4 Life :::

Many of us gravitated to this book, to get us through the FCC exam.

Not only is it cheaper than the recommended books, but we found it to be better learning material.

Combine this with fcctests site you are guaranteed to pass the test with flying colours!

NOTE: Mr Fortich discourages the use of this book. We can't disagree enough. It is understandable why he and Parker may oppose it. They are part of the Elkins Institute, and money spent at the school bookstore will benefit the school. So, with the money you save on the purchase of this book, consider donating a little back to the school, they need it.

Advice for new students
1) Yes, Parker and Fortich do tell a lot of stories. Maybe 50% of the time. Be patient and just put up with it!
2) Don't rely on class time to learn the material. Do the required reading at home, or you will be left behind! Study!!! Start now, not tomorrow!!!
3) You'll get three months of good Electronics study. It ain't much, so make the most of it. The other two months will focus mostly on the FCC questions.
4) Learning the FCC is 80% memorisation. The sooner you read it, the better you'll be at trying to memorise the answers!! That means starting today.
5) Create a mail list and start communicating with class mates via e-mail. This will become vital towards the end of the term, and during your job hunting, networking will be essential, so might as well get it started early.

NOTE: To watch the video, you will need QuickTime 7. Prior versions won't work, because this video will be utilising the H.264 codec. Broadband connection is also required.

'Radioactivity' - the class graduation day (15.9MB)
featuring the music of Kraftwerk.


Student Speeches - (16MB)

Some Pictures of the Event: click here

King and I discovered something about Section C of Element 3.

There are 4 questions to do with SSB. Three of them have 'B' as the answer. So, when you see SSB in a question, just remember that last letter in SSB - the answer is 'B'!

The exception is:

68] Which of the following is only required for CW or SSB
demodulation?

a} BFO. <-- first answer is correct

Things you need to know!
The first thing you should do before looking at your exam is write down the time constants (discharge in percent: 36.8, 13.5, 5, 1.8, 0.7) on your scratch sheet. Also, write down the degree's for beamwidth (51 degrees for 12db, 36.1 degrees for 15db, 20.3 degrees for 20db and 6.4 degrees for 30db). You'll need it during the exam, and under pressure, you might have trouble remembering them later.

100 microFarad times 470 kiloOhm is expressed as:
0.0001 x 470,000

Attention all Fagaowi, um, I mean Students!
The extra last minute revision tour-de-force group session will meet Tuesday morning at 7:55am at Gunters Restaurant (close to BlockBusters, corner of Westborough/El Camino). This is meant to 'tune up' our brains before taking the exam. Come and enjoy a power breakfast to get those neutrons motivated like an electromotive force charged up your rear end!!!





Trivia
The word "Vegetarian" was coined on Sept 30, 1847 with the formation of the British Vegetarian Society.
It was derived from the Latin 'vegetus', meaning whole, sound, fresh, lively;
Before this date, vegetarians were known as "Pythagoreans."

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.
Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." - Pythagoras

Based on the average distance from the Sun (93,000,000 miles) we travel 254,620.12 miles per day on our orbit around the Sun. That works out to be 10,609.17 miles per hour, 176.82 miles a minute, or 2.95 miles a second.

This only accounts for our speed due to the Earths orbit around the Sun.

We are also spinning as the Earth rotates. The Earth makes one orbit per day. The circumference at the point of the equator is 24,902 miles. So, if you lived at the equator, add an additional 24,902 miles to the 254,620.12 miles per day going around the Sun to get the total distance you travelled in a day. That would be 11,647 miles per hour - 3.26 miles per second.

I think it is a safe estimate that we in San Francisco are travelling 3.1 miles per second. Now, if only I got a penny for every mile I went...

I have taken some of the FCC practice exams online, and I made a PDF of each one, for use as a learning aid. Some of them are my second attempt. On my first attempt, the score was not so high, and I even failed the third one on my first try (with a score of only 50). These online tests are harder than what we will get because:
1) They have at least one diagram question, our's will not.
2) Their Section H contains 10 questions, ours will only have 5.

So don't get too discouraged, use them as a learning aid, and learn from the mistakes you make!

These files can be found at:

http://veggiedude.com/class/fcc/
1 week left for the FCC Exam! (don't worry, be happy)

For Element 1 (and only for Element 1), look at the answers before reading the question, because it may not be necessary. If you see an answer with these words, always choose them as the correct answer:

1) "Part 80" (questions 12, 15 and 40)

2) "vertically polarized" (3 questions)

3) "cease" or the phrase "stop transmission" (questions 121, 125 and 95, 130 - these four basically ask the same question, just different wording)

4) "All of these" (11 questions total)

5) "Any of these" (2 questions total)

also,

6) Questions 81, 117 and 164 all have these similar answers:
"For three minutes immediately after the hour and the half-hour", or
"For three minutes immediately after the hour and half-hour", or
"Three minutes at the beginning of every hour and half hour."
Question 151 has it this way: "00, 30" which is the same meaning.

That means we have 27 less questions to learn out of 170 total = 143

The two radiotelephony calling and distress frequencies that must be monitored at all times: 2182 kHz and 156.8 MHz (a MUST KNOW for several questions)

Joe King Exclusive: (Aug 1, 2005)
Joe has discovered that any option that say's "12 passengers" is CORRECT. (3 questions)
Ignore "twelve passengers" - it is WRONG.

Click here for a few Element 3 observations

Interesting... hunger hormone seems to be linked to memory. Maybe one day they will enhance memory while fighting off obesity. Cool.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Hunger hormone linked to memory

The week in review was really a week of review!

But we did cover two new topics:
Motors and Antennas.

It's a good thing we finally got to this point, because the last section of element 3 is all about antennas.

Joe King told me today that he won't bother studying Section H, because it is only 5 questions on the exam, and not worth the bother to learn 143 new questions on a topic which is rather vague and tedious. He does have a point.

18 days left for the FCC Exam!

study hard!!!

When Chirac critisized British cuisine as being bland, well, he would have been right, like 50 years ago. As of the turn of the century, the number one dish in Britain was voted to be 'Chicken Vindaloo'.

Now, it seems curry, that great spice loved by many Britons, can prevent skin and cancer, and maybe lung cancer too!

"The compound that makes curry yellow could help fight skin cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. They said curcumin, found in the spice turmeric, interferes with melanoma cells. Tests in laboratory dishes show that curcumin made melanoma skin cancer cells more likely to self-destruct in a process known as apoptosis. The same team has found that curcumin helped stop the spread of breast cancer tumor cells to the lungs of mice."

Reuters AlertNet - Curry ingredient fights skin cancer - U.S. study

Global warming could be controlled if we all became vegetarians and stopped eating meat. That's the view of British physicist Alan Calverd, who thinks that giving up pork chops, lamb cutlets and chicken burgers would do more for the environment than burning less oil and gas.

"Writing in this month's Physics World, Calvert calculates that the animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock.

Moreover, there would be no adverse effects to health and it would be an experiment that we could abandon at any stage. 'Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels,' he says.

Physics World is the international monthly magazine published by the Institute of Physics."

Not mentioned is the amount of ammonia that would be cut. Excessive ammonia is suppose to contribute to the greenhouse effect, so the end result could be much more beneficial than the article suggests. Calvert writes that he is not a vegetarian, but believes this is the easiest way to solve the Global warming issue.

Physics World - Cut global warming by becoming vegetarian

The past week we have covered the physics of optics and also logic gates. The logic gates discussion continued today and will finish tomorrow.