SARC

Ken KD9HIJ recently came across a novice level exam from 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.

Don KD9KSJ took his technician exam with our VE testing team in April. About a week later he received his license and purchased a Yaesu FT-65R. The radio arrived in about a week and he was excited to get on the air. Using a scanner he already had he was able to test the radio an make some transmissions. But his goal was to get on some repeaters and talk with other hams nearby. This required programming some frequencies into the radio.

Don had used the manual and checked YouTube for programming instructions. He tried both a programming cable and keying the repeater frequencies directly into the radio’s memory with no luck. Unfortunately we’ve all experienced the unusually complicated task of programming a radio, just like Don was going through. It’s too bad that this typically poorly documented step comes right after you receive your license and get on want to get on the air.

Being a resourceful ham, like all of us are, Don continued to look for a solution and reached out to our web site for some help. Matt AC9IG received this email and after a short discussion used our mailing list Sarc-All to find a club member with a similar radio. Ray K9EYT responded with an offer to help.

Ray reported similar frustration when programming his own radio. But ultimately he worked with Don and got him set up with four repeaters and two simplex frequencies. Don says that he’s now comfortable with the programming process and should be able to add more frequencies in the future.

If you’re on one of our repeaters and hear KD9KSJ be sure to say hi and welcome him to the ham radio community.