I’ve vaguely thought about becoming a ham, an amateur radio operator, since I first heard about them decades ago. I flipped through some manuals (I’d repeatedly checked out the hams’ bible, the American Radio Relay League’s Handbook, from the library I worked at for weeks of casual browsing.)
Unfortunately, though, you can’t just hook up random parts and start broadcasting. You have to pass the official FCC exam., which covers both technical and regulatory matters. Back in the day, it included learning Morse code, which I tried to pick up several times, but always failed miserably.
In the end, I just didn’t care to do all that work to sit around collecting call signs, which seemed to be the primary thing a ham did.
To make matters worse, this here Internet thing popped up, which for me is a more natural communication medium. That relieved what little pressure I felt to become a ham.
But a while after that, the FCC finally dropped the code requirement for the lowest two classes, Novice and Technician. (In fact, Novice class no longer exists.)
And while I slowly realized that being a ham can be useful in an emergency, even that wasn’t enough to make me get off my lazy butt and study.
Recently, though, I learn that a local ham club, Houston Hams, is running an event where you show up at 8:00 a.m., pay $25, and walk out eight hours later with a Technician license. (I’d provide a link, but Houston Hams’ web site appears to be broken.)
Out of curiosity, I took a sample test online to see how far behind I was.
The result?
You scored 26 correct answers and 9 incorrect answers from a total of 35.
You would have passed the exam! Congratulations!
This works out to be a hair over 74%. Twenty-six correct answers is the minimum required to pass the test. What’s more, there’s three or four questions I would have gotten right if I’d paid attention. (Yeah, when you’re trying to identify prohibited activity, anything with the word “commercial” in it is a good guess. It’s called “amateur” radio for a reason.)
Anyway, with the class, I expect to have no trouble passing the real exam, and I’ll get to become (old joke, I’m sure) radio-active. (And, of course, get something else I can spend money I don’t have on.)