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                  √    Amateur radio Technician

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Unlike most people, my bucket list does not consist of places to go or things to do.  Mine consists of certifications I want to get.  Last November, after about two decades of "I'll get around to it" I finally sat for my amateur radio Technician class license exam.

In my defense, for most of the time I delayed, there were 5 classes, and 4 of them required a minimum proficiency of 5 words per minute in Morse code.  The 1 non-CW class was Technician, and it is still a relatively low-privilege class.  I cannot play in the HF band, which is where most of the around-the-world conversations take place.  It just didn't seem worth it at the time.

So when I found out that at some point in the last 20 years, they did away with 2 classes and ditched the CW proficiency requirements for the other two, I was ready to finally get around to trying.  Which of course means, it was 2 years later before I finally got around to it.  Just like I passed the exam in November and was so happy with myself, I am finishing writing about it 3 months later.

Hey, I'm a busy man.  If I don't teach my daughters to say "Rock On!" and throw horns, who will?

The Beloved has been somewhat dubious about the utility of amateur radio.  In her defense, most technology I touch tends to malfunction.  In fact, at the various labs I've worked, the following equation describes my luck:

R=D/T

Where R is the Reliability of an instrument, D is the distance from me, and T is the Time spent with me.

However, on our recent trip to Billings fort he Dot's MRI, I managed to use my poor old used 55-watt 2 meter mobile unit to contact a repeater from about 30-40 miles out and reach a fellow ham with crystal clear reception and transmission in an area with no cell reception.  Not that my rig is decrepit or anything.  It was NIB and the height of technology when it was introduced...roughly around when I learned about ham radio for the first time.  And that was on a temporary set-up with a magnetic mount antenna and a down-and-dirty power feed job.

So now, I have picked up a couple 25-watt 2 meters (which really are old and a little beat-up), my 5-watt handheld dual band, and my 55-watt Kenwood.  I'm supposed to pick up a 6-meter (diet shortwave) unit on extended loan, and figure I can rig a temporary inverted V dipole for it.

I'm leaning on the beloved to get her Technician later this year while I sit for my General.  And eventually I will splurge on a nice multi-band radio.  For now, I just want a dual-band  with dual-mode so I can work satellites from one unit.

Now to find a landlord that will let me build a true aluminum farm.