New HAM First QSO

See here, https://www.irts.ie/cgi/st.cgi?applying

And here for study material https://www.irts.ie/dnloads/Amateur_Station_Course_Guide.pdf

Get to know the band plans inside out, Beacon frequencies, power limits per band etc.

Land mobile, maritime mobile limits.

Regulations, regulations regulations, Know them inside out.

Try get the country call signs in your head, I found this difficult.

Next is the electrical end, this isn't very difficult you can learn it off.

Know resistors, capacitors, series and parallel, the question will come up on each but I think you'll only have one question on each so don't go mad studying this if you don't know it, don't spend too much time on resistors and capacitors.

Basically, anything in that study material I linked in above you need to know. Especially regulations but you need a pass in each section.

Radio is a great hobby, having the license and being able to use all those bands is really great.

Yes, wait until you get the license, no point spending money on radios you can't use.

When you get the license don't go mad, it's easy to spend thousands on radios, amplifiers and Beams and towers.

If you do want to get a new radio then I highly suggest the new Yaesu FTDX-10, I had the Icom 7300 and my head used to be wrecked listening to it because the audio is so bad from it, put it this way, on the 7300 I had to have Noise Reduction on all the time to make it a bit bearable and on the FTDX-10 I only use DNR when there's lots of thunderstorms on over the continent which makes the static really bad at times, the DNR on the FTDX-10 is just amazing, but other than that I don't use noise reduction on the FTDX-10, I live in the country so that helps a lot too.

A lot of people went mad for the 7300 because of the waterfall but the screen is useless if the audio is crap. There are lots of People who love the 7300 and that's fine but from having the FT-891 I knew the 7300 audio was poor after listening to the 891 other than that I probably would have thought the harsh noisy audio from the 7300 was normal!

The contour function on the Yaesu radios makes a big difference, Yaesu have nailed it when it comes to Audio quality, I've heard the big Icom radios too and their audio just doesn't suit me to be honest, the audio in my opinion is very important when it comes to radio.

I listen a lot to Shortwave, LW/MW and the 7300 cut a lot of the lows from the audio which turning up the bass couldn't compensate for so it's just not a great radio in my opinion + it overloads easy, I never have to back off the RF on the Yaesu + it's filters are a lot better at reducing QRM from close by stations.

A really great first radio to get, even better 2nd hand is the Yaesu FT-450D, doesn't cost a lot and gets you on the air, that's all you really need, you don't need fancy screens or waterfalls, they're nice to have but they are not essential. You can always add a panadapter and SDR later if you want an SDR, but it will mean opening the radio and soldering.

If you do get another radio down the road you can keep the 450D, I have an FT-891 and I set it up in the sitting room connected to a portable vertical and I managed to get fantastic DX on it all over the world on 20m. It's great when I don't want to go up to the shack and just listening on the bands, I can try make the contact without moving.

I'm going to get into CB also, going to get a 40 CH CB and IMAX 2000 and get it in the air to have fun on CB and keep the airwaves alive if I can, I love those older President radios, get one that does SSB as most people talk using SSB in Ireland. I got a President Randy III on the way, a portable 40CH AM/FM CB that's incredibly small with lithium battery and a 51 inch antenna, the stock ones are useless, I might or might not contact anyone on it but the more people that get on CB the better to keep it alive.

Antenna wise I have had great success using the hyendcompany EFHW 49:1

Get the one "with C" for 80m which brings resonance up in the phone portion of 80m otherwise it will be too low in the CW portion, basically they use a ceramic cap in the middle of the antenna which electrically shortens the antenna without physically shortening it which would mess up the other bands, very clever, no doubt inspired by Steve Ellington on youtube.

This antenna is really good, I get good DX and Good NVIS or around Ireland/UK/Europe, it won't perform like a beam on a tower but it costs a fraction and to be honest I'm not a Ham that strives to be the biggest and loudest and there are plenty of p1ssing contests about how high you're bouncing your signal on their S-meter vs theirs. As I said, I make good contacts, distant and local and for the amount of time I have which is not a lot I could never justify the thousands needed on tower or beam not to mention the hassle of something breaks. The worst that can happen my EFHW is that it comes down and I have to put it up again.

Whatever wire antenna you get make sure it's up as high as possible and in the case of the EFHW, it's a lot more forgiving in the way it can be mounted. You can do INV V, IMV L or sloper, I have mine as kind of a sloping INV L but works well for me, first half is up around 60-65 feet between 2 trees and the rest sloped down to around 3 feet where I have the UNUN grounded.

One of the main advantages of the EFHW is that it does not need a tuner meaning more power is going to the antenna than lost in the coax using a tuner with an antenna who's SWR is high. This is especially useful when using an amplifier meaning you don't have to spend 1500 Euro's or more on a tuner that can handle the power. Saying low SWR makes an antenna more efficient is not correct, you could have it 3 feet off the ground with low swr but it won't radiate well. Low SWR only means more power goes to the antenna and that can only happen without a tuner, the tuner just keeps the radio happy but it's not as simple as this either because a well designed and grounded Doublet works well connected to a tuner the difference is that it should be fed with ladder line to the tuner and this reduces the losses greatly compared to coax.

The other advantage is that the EFHW is resonant on multiple bands so you don't need a dipole for all the bands you want to work.

Hams get obsessed with grounding, I have the antenna grounded and the psu supplying the radio via the main earth in the plug, that's all you need, ground the coax before it enters the shack, if you wish. If you use non resonant antennas then grounding becomes much more important, using doublet for instance, this can cause a lot of rf in the house if you don't have a super good ground but since I use resonant antenna this is no issue for me. Dipoles fed with coax, G5RV can cause RF in the shack because it's a non resonant antenna partly fed with coax. Again, I have had great success with the EFHW in the link above. My shack is in the attic and the run for a ground would be too long which risks the earth radiating as an antenna so your earth needs to be short as possible.

Hope you find this info useful.

Best of luck, let us know how you get on.