Not involved in ham radio as much as I used to be, but still make it a point to at least keep a quality HT around, especially when traveling on road trips or in more remote/rural areas. There is a website called Repeater Book (and they also have an app), which is great for printing out lists of repeaters by geographic area ahead of time.

That is one thing about your standard handheld 5 watt 2M ham radio (HT) - you'll get some range without line of sight, but it is on the order of a mile or two. With line of sight, and a large clearance zone around the line of sight (as in peak to peak), we routinely talk at 90+ mile range using hand-helds with a 19" whip antenna substituted for the stock antenna.

Just passed the technician and general class exams tonight. Now to get my Kenwood HT-72 D programmed with local repeaters, and wait for my license to show up in the FCC database.

Nice! Congratulations!

Congrats!

I went to go look at the question pools they have available online, just to see what a test would be like. I was surprised that there were very few technical questions, and the ones I did find didn't seem all that tough to answer (granted, I have an EE degree and many decades of engineering experience that would give me an edge). I just jumped and skipped around the question pool, not in any order, but that was my impression. Most of the questions seemed to be about rules and regulations, and some of those rules and regs just seemed to be regulating the most inconsequential of things. You need rules and regs, I understand that, but it seems like the FCC is regulating minutia - things as silly as what color underwear you have to put on when using amateur radio (that's tongue-in-cheek obviously, but not far from what I saw in the questions). I guess I was just expecting something a little more ... technical ... in nature.

Check the amateur extra question pool. It tends to be more technical and less rule oriented. But as an EE, it probably won't be anything you haven't seen before.

Seen before? Probably a lot of it. Remembered? Uuuhhh, maybe not so much. My degree is from 1979! I could probably do OK on the technical part if all the questions were multiple choice. I would probably be better at recognizing what was NOT the answer, than knowing what was the answer.

For those in the UK try QADV:

http://freespace.virgin.net/murray.g3kzb/QCSSprognts.htm

It is a Windows program which gives you the tests needed to pass the exams. It works well and is up to date. Give it a try.

Multiple choice, and you can use a calculator. Not that it helped me much with formulas that include Greek letters. But if I can do it . . . . .