Becoming proficient in ham radio is a journey of moving forward, step by step. My new series of articles will provide a complete process roadmap.

When I started my blog in 2015, I described our editorial stance as “support for the advanced beginner. This means exploration and encouragement to do more, to move from beginner to intermediate levels of knowledge and capability in selected areas of interest. This means to help bridge the gap between awareness and some level of expertise. This means various degrees of self-education, learning by doing, and having nurturing conversations with folks who are a bit further along in the journey.”

At this point in time, I had fifty years of experience in ham radio and shortwave listening, but was just starting my journey is a “maker”. So, in many respects, this blog was meant to describe my advancement into new areas of knowledge and skills.

I have had many inquiries from newcomers asking about becoming proficient in ham radio and where to concentrate efforts. Many readers have thanked me for helping them get past hurdles in their project goals.

While I have my 10,000 hours in a few subject domains, I am far from being an expert in most. If I am lucky, I can get to competent or proficient in a few areas. And that’s enough for successful and enjoyable technical project activities. With a good foundation, it’s amazing what you can accomplish in 100 or 500 hours of effort.

So, what is our landscape of interests and activities? What is a good foundation and how do we build one? What are the best ways to learn? And, what do we mean by levels of proficiency and performance in our project goals?

Becoming Proficient in Ham Radio – What it Means

Proficiency is a depth of understanding of a discipline and area of practice. You will discover proficiency comes from Latin “to go forward or make progress”.

So, we will explore how to move forward. While I will focus on proficiency as a maker or home brewer, my framework will apply equally to the operating side. Or even to many other hobbies in general.