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I became involved in Amateur Radio when a friend invited me to a club meeting. I had read about "hams" helping out in disaster areas, and thought that it would be something I'd like to do, but I never imagined I KNEW a ham operator. In 1992 I had been laid off from work,and lost my left eye to Diabetes, all within a 6 month time frame. So when Larry, KB5ZB, invited me to attend a club meeting in February of '97, I didn't really care what kind of club it was, I was just glad to get out of the house. That night I found out that several of my friends were Ham's, and that it was really easy to obtain an FCC license to operate on the ham frequencies. As a matter of fact, the club was going to be holding a V.E. session (volunteer examiner) within two months. I obtained the correct study material and dove right in. I was so obsessed with getting my "ticket" that I studied 12-18 hours a day. When the next month's meeting came around, Larry called to see if I wanted to go,which of course I did. On the way home he questioned me about whether I'd been studying, and I told him that I had and that I had no doubts that I would pass. Larry is a smart man, and told me not to feel too bad if I didn't pass the first time out of the gate, that a lot of hams didn't pass the first time. This just made me more determined to pass the first time. By the time the V.E. session rolled around I knew the material backwards and forwards and I passed the test only missing one question . CW, or as it is more commonly known, "morse code" took me a couple of tries at the test, but it was something I wanted to learn, so I didn't give up on it. In 2000 I passed my General ticket on my first try.
That's been a little over 15 years ago now, and I've upgraded to a General Class ticket, which gives me band privileges to talk worldwide. My gear includes:
During my 15 years of being a ham I have:
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