Electronics on W3MRB — Ham Radio & 3D Printing https://w3mrb.com/tags/electronics/ Recent content in Electronics on W3MRB — Ham Radio & 3D Printing Hugo en Copyright © 2026 Michael Bell (W3MRB). Sun, 12 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400 Confessions of an Edge-Case Ham https://w3mrb.com/blog/2026/07/edge-case-ham/ Sun, 12 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400 https://w3mrb.com/blog/2026/07/edge-case-ham/ I’ll say the quiet part out loud: I’m not really in this for the conversations.

Plenty of hams live for the contact — the rare DX on the other side of the planet, the ragchew that runs past midnight, the contest sprint. I respect it. It’s just not the part that pulls me. What pulls me is the bench. The soldering iron, the oscilloscope, the moment a circuit I built does the thing physics said it would. I’m an edge-case ham: I do less operating and more tinkering, because I was in this for the electronics long before I ever keyed a mic.

]]> Grinding for Extra: Studying Ham Radio's Hardest Exam as an Engineer https://w3mrb.com/blog/2026/07/grinding-for-extra/ Sat, 11 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400 https://w3mrb.com/blog/2026/07/grinding-for-extra/ I passed my General a while back. Now I’m studying for Amateur Extra — the top US license class — and this post kicks off a series where I work through it in public, from the perspective of someone who’s here for the electronics more than the operating.

This first one is about why the Extra material is worth your time even if you never care about the extra frequency privileges.

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