Saturday, March 6, 2010

Ham Radio

Most of my ham radio friends have had their licenses much longer than me.  I am a relatively young ham, having received my ticket in March of 1993.  I did have a novice license back in 1965, but was unable to advance, and it expired in 1966.

Then in the later part of 1993, almost thirty years later, a local ham persuaded me to try for it again, stating that the test was much easier, and that you did not have to draw diagrams or schematics of the different radio items.  Since I took my test , the written test are even easier to pass, and now you do not have to take a morris code test at all.

I have really enjoyed this 17 years in the hobby, and have met some really fine people.  Some I have met in person, and some I only know from talking to them on the radio during one of the two times we meet each day to chat. These chats are called QSO's, and somewhere between two of us and a dozen or so meet each day from 6:30am until 8:00am and again from 6:00pm until 6:50pm.

Our group is very conservative and we do a lot of talking about politics.  I'm surprised that some of them have not ran for something. It may happen.  Also, we do discuss our radio equipment and antenna's quite a bit.  Of course the conversations can run about anything anyone wants to bring up.  Long live ham radio.

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