Licensed Technician

I've been taking classes for the past several weeks and studying to pass the exam for becoming a licensed ham radio operator. There are 3 levels of licenses and the first level is called Technician. There are 35 test questions chosen out of a pool of over 300 possible questions. We left for Seaside, OR yesterday and on the way down my wife quizzed me. I had previously been taking practice tests online at qrz.com. I was doing pretty well and was pretty confident in myself. Local Amateur Radio clubs around the world held their annual Field Day event this weekend and it is not uncommon for there to be testing sessions available at this time. It requires 3 licensed hams of General license or higher (General is the second level, Extra is the third) who are certified by a VEC (Volunteer Examiner Coordinator). Basically this means that they are allowed to administer the exams and have passed training for FCC regulations and what-not.

Anyway, we found where the club in the Seaside area was holding their Field Day event and stopped by to pay them a visit. We actually missed our exit off the freeway because Mandy was asking me test questions. She's been studying along with me as well since she thought it would be a good addition to compliment her previously obtained CERT training. We were about 15 miles past our exit by the time we realized we had missed our turn off that we pulled out the laptop, fired up Microsoft Streets & Trips, and recalculated a new route which took us through Portland where we stopped for lunch.

Field Day events were being held at a restaurant/gift shop/museum at mile marker 18 on Hwy 26 called Camp 18. We found the club & got ourselves set up for a test. They had actually just finished a testing session when we arrived but they were happy to get us set up. Mandy finished first and missed only one. I was a little concerned because many of the questions I was answering seemed foreign to me as I had not seen several of them on the practice tests I had taken. The tests we took were different sets of questions from each other. My test was graded and I was surprised to hear that I too only missed one. I was glad as well because if I had done worse than Mandy, I would have never heard the end of it. The examiner said he did worse than his wife 15 years ago and he's never heard the end of it.

In fact one of the examiners had actually moved to Oregon from Bonney Lake, WA and were originally certified as hams at the same place we have been taking our classes (Maple Valley fire station). And if that wasn't coincidence enough, just as we were about to leave they asked just one more question. "Are you L.D.S.?" I said yes and they said they were as well and that they could just tell. Kind of funny how that happens and yet it somehow doesn't surprise me any more.

Now we'll be researching what kind of radio to start with so I can be able to transmit at something higher than .5 watts which is what you get without a license from the 2 way radios you can get at many retail stores.