I am pretty excited about getting my ham ticket. I have been doing a lot of home work on principles of radio, antenna and propagation. I I bought a new Philips radio and fixed up a long wire as antenna on the terrace (my wife uses it to dry cloths too). I can hear lot of activity on 40 M, but most of them are in SSB. It seems very few hams uses AM in Kerala. I am planning to build a beat frequency oscilator tomorrow. Today i joined a hambrewers mail list. It also promises to be exciting.