I’m a Ham!!!

Well, it’s official, I am a ham…not that you didn’t already know that ;) The truth is that last week I passed the written exams for both my technician class (level 2) and general class (level 3) ham radio licenses. This was a huge relief given the weeks that I had spent cramming – which continued right up until minutes before the exam in the Sunview Memorial Building parking lot. in Ft. Lauderdale. My sweet husband drove me down and waited the hour that it took in the car. The test pool for each level is made public and my strategy was to use every ounce of short term memory that I could muster to learn the 1000 question pool. My strategy proved successful and I am very happy to announce that I am now a member of the Ham community. There was one last bit of business that I needed to complete – the 5wpm of morse code. With being quite busy with all of our preparations getting Rosario ready for our trip to the Bahamas, I had decided about 10 days before the exam to focus only on the written and to then hold off on testing for the morse until we reached the Bahamas or Caribbean. There has been much effort over the past few years to remove this antiquated portion of the exam. While I have to confess that there was a small part of me that was secretly excited to learn this dying language, the additional time that it would require me to commit was daunting. Well…long story short, the Universe has rewarded my intuition to not rush into studying it b/c FINALLY the FCC ruled that morse code is not a necessary element for acquiring your ham radio license!!! This ruling was just made official on Friday. So that’s it…I’m official and am now just waiting for my call sign from the FCC. Perhaps now in my spare time I will throw on the headphones and decide to learn it anyway…or at least a few more letters than the current 5 that I hold in my pocket.