Scandanavia and Ham Radio License

No, this won't be an article about operating in Scandanavia (sorry hams!).
This is just an update on me. Just got back from a trip to Norway, Sweden,
and Denmark (in that order) and had a blast! I've been to Europe several
times before but this was a different experience for sure. If we had more
time I know I would have enjoyed Finland and Latvia as well (next time!)

Overall, I'd have to say Norway was my favorite. We went to the fjords
and they were as stunning as everyone said they would be. Pictures don't
really do it justice. The train that we took from Oslo to the west coast
was also fantastic. It seems the Norwegians are big on summer cabins in
some *very* rustic areas. Most don't appear to have electricity. I had a rural
upbringing but man that's out there even for me!

Traveling was very simple - we never had a problem communicating with anyone.
People didn't even apologize for their English like I've noticed
people doing in other European countries - they know they have it down!

The food was great - lots of fish which was a dream for me being a seafood
lover.

Stockholm was great too, though it was noticeably larger and busier than Oslo.
It featured my favorite museum of the trip - the Vasa museum. It's a museum
with a beautifully preserved ship that sank in 1628. The ship is huge! The exhibits
that are all around it are a great complement to the ship itself - they give
a picture of what life was like on a ship at that time.

Copenhagen was the last stop of the trip. It took a few hours to get used to
looking both ways both for cars and bikes! I haven't seen that many bikes
around since I was in Amsterdam several years ago. I had a fantastic time
at Tivoli Gardens, which is an amusement park in Copenhagen. The rides were
awesome, and the gardens were beautiful.

We stayed in both Airbnbs and hotels depending on the city, and I was
reminded of the differences between typical American and European bathrooms.
This may seem like an odd aside but it's definitely one of the things I notice.
It's a good thing my wife and I are small people - I have friends that
might not be able to get into the showers there!

Anyway, great trip! I hope to get back there someday and finish the Nordic tour.

---

The day after we got back, I sat (jetlagged) for the Amateur Radio Technician
exam and passed! Looking forward to getting my callsign soon and getting
on the air! I wanted to start cheap so I bought a Baofeng BF-F8HP a couple
weeks ago (ducks). Obviously I've just been listening so far but performance seems to
be good. I did swap out the antenna for a Signal Stick after reading the
default rubber ducky that comes with it is total crap.

I started doing some initial research on HF in preparation and I think I'm
going to learn Morse Code. It seems like CW is the cheapest way to get on the
air on HF and I definitely can't see myself spending what it takes for a good
HF rig. Also, I wouldn't necessarily have to upgrade my license to General class
if I wanted to start out by doing CW on, say, the 40 meter band.

I've seen a few threads on r/amateurradio and elsewhere about what gets people
into amateur radio these days. For me it was definitely RTL-SDR. I played around
with shortwave on there in addition to listening to public service radio frequencies
in my area. Becoming a ham seemed like the logical next step towards improving
my RF knowledge. Big shout out to the ARRL exam book and HamExam.org for helping
me out in passing the exam. If I do go for the General at some point, I'll be
back to those resources.

As always, hit me up on Mastodon if you want to chat - @jboverf@mastodon.sdf.org