RHG Articles

President’s Report September 2018

This month’s RHG will be fairly brief. As you know I’ve been busy outside of Ham radio for the last month or so and this publication and the less frequent web site updates show this. I have been able to keep tabs on the club through meeting minutes and SARC-All and I’m very happy to see the club has continued to keep busy.

I’d like to thank everyone who helped clear out a lot of equipment from our construction project location, as well as those of you who toted it to two hamfests and organized our online auction for the items. I’d also like to thank Bob WG0L and Peter N9POL for bringing in VU2RBI as our guest speaker at this month’s club meeting.

Don’t forget that the Illinois QSO Party is October 21 from noon to 8pm local time. It’s an easy exchange in this contest you give your signal report and county, such as “59 Cook.” You’ll get back a signal report and either a state or county. The great thing about this contest is everyone will be looking for you!

News RHG Articles

Novice Exam from 1983

Ken KD9HIJ recently came across a novice level exam from 1983.

Novice exam, 1983

The full exam can be seen here. See how you do!

On our discussion board Bruce N9EHA had a few memories about the exam.

That’s awesome. [It] could be an exam you could have given to someone for a Novice test I suppose. Remember that back then, a Novice exam could be administered by just a single ham with a General class license or higher. No trip down to the FCC field office until you wanted to take the Technician exam. You also had to give them their 5 WPM code test, and they could either answer 7 out of 10 questions (IIRC) about the text sent, usually a mock QSO, or they could just show one minute of solid copy, which was 25 characters in a row with no mistakes.

Good blast from the past to see some old Novice exams again. Especially from Ameco, who wrote a lot of the radio license license books that people recommended to me. Back then, people recommended I pick up either the Heath Kit ham radio training course, or the Ameco book, along with what elmers would teach me for everything else. After that, everyone used to recommend the “Bash Books” by Dick Bash, to pass the Technician test. I can’t remember if the entire question pool was published back then when the FCC was still administering the ham radio exams.

Events

SARC Picnic – Lou Malnatis

The club invites all members, their families and friends to join us four our Summer Picnic. This year we will be at Lou Malnati’s in Schaumburg. Please join us from 5pm to 7pm on Saturday, September 8, 2018. We request that you contact our Social Activities Chair to reserve your spot.

A limited menu will be available for purchase. Continue reading “SARC Picnic – Lou Malnatis”