tl;dr : After 10-12 years of wanting to get into amateur radio (but failing to do so cause of having to do maths and electronics and being too young), I finally registered to take my ham radio exam in two months.
I’ve always been intrigued by the ham radio world, from a very young age. I do not exactly remember how I discovered it, but I think it was on my 2DS while watching Youtube (so, approximatively 10-12 years ago…). Since then, it stuck with me and stayed in my backlog of “cool things to try one day”. I tried to learn more about it and get involved 8 years ago, but did not find enough resources, was overwhelmed by all the science and maths (i’ve never really liked science and maths), ended up too many questions so I put it up aside. I was 15 at the time, but never completely lost interest, and was still subscribed to some youtube channels and subreddits.
Fast-forward to 2025 : I had a 2 months summer job working from 5am to 11am 6 days a week, and I’m writing a 60-page-thick report to validate my third year of CS studies. I decided to save a good part of my first paycheck for my future, and kept the rest to spend however I saw fit. So I bought myself an RTL-SDR v3 kit1, having heard of it many times before on ham-related subreddits and videos.
The kit that I got myself : RTL-SDR v3, antenna, coax, dipole mount point and a tripod.
Exactly 10 days after receiving my package, one of my favorite Youtubers (Feldup) posted a video2 about radios, shortwave exploration, and weird stations (UVB-76, WKCR hijacking, lost cosmonauts, ghost ambulance…). The video is insane, and starts by a 50min introduction to radio waves, propagation, shortwaves and all that stuff. It really motivated me to start experimenting with my RTL-SDR.
This was released at the PERFECT time, and I basically spent all of August and September exploring the radio waves around me (safe to say that my work for the 60-page report slowed down a bit :3), reporting signals that I didn’t know about, checking wikis and listening to online SDRs… I also tried weather satellite imagery !! It was a lot of fun to try and get images from satellites (even tho I lost the files). I went very deep into the rabbit hole, and liked it A LOT.
Feldup’s Video - Findings no. 103 & 104
Naturally, I started to wonder about ham radio again. But life got in the way and classes resumed, I didn’t really had time to pass my ham exam or anything else. I obviously had free time, but I got a bit sidetracked and invested 90% of it into live production, my main hobby (but it was a damn good decision). Now it’s 2026 and I have much more free time, due to the fact that I have a job and next to no homework. So I decided to get into the rabbithole again, but this time on the ham radio side.
I watched countless videos, I was thinking, eating and sleeping ham radio, discovered POTA, SOTA and lots of activities, digital modes, handhelds, propagation, sporadic E, and so much more. I even got interested in my local scene and repeaters around me, found a Parisian blogger/Youtuber that helped me learn many things by just watching him operate3… I also learned a lot about the hobby-in-a-hobby that is antenna making/crafting/tuning. All of this got me really excited to take my ham radio exam and get my hand on an actual ham radio transceiver, and start my journey :3
“ham radio”, a great video showcasing the hobby by Not Just a Hobby4
So, I decided to set some free time aside every week to learn and pass my ham radio exam, juggling with the few live productions I have this summer. To motivate myself, I already booked the date with my local ham exam center, and it’s gonna be in about two months.
As of now, I have :
- Made a small roadmap of the gear I’ll buy (HF transceiver, antenna, power supply…)
- Learned 70% of the legislation part of the exam (here in France our exam is composed of two parts : legislation and technical)
- Started studying the technical part
- Made lots of notes and cheat sheets.
In the end, it took me 8 years to go from “cool thing i’ll do one day but I’m too lazy to do maths and electronics to take my ham radio exam” to my first rabbit hole dive, and then 2 years to actually register for the exam and realize that this hobby is soooo much cooler and deeper than I thought !
I’m not that much of a procrastinator, but having grown up and feeling ready to do maths and electronics (after literal years of not doing so) just to pass my ham radio exam helped a lot.
Hopefully the next update will be with a callsign, see you in two months :3
P.S : For french readers, here are the resources I’m using to study :
- These two channels (they cover 70% of the program) : F4ISB + F6KUQ
- This web-based tool to test myself : Exam’1
- And this huge PDF that covers everything you need to know (I use it as a supplement of the two aforementioned channels) : F6KGL’s PDF
- Some articles : How do radios work, Impedance and SWR
- The Internet