I got my first radio-amateur licence in 1979. The callsign was PD0HTW.
It was a kind off novice-licence with only 6 frequencies were you could work in the two- meter band.
A year later i passed the so called C-license (class 2) and i received the call-sign PE1FGS. Now it was possible to work on all frequenties above 50 Mhz.
After three exams in all those years i finally past my CW-exam very recently in december 2001 !!
Only with the CW you can get the class1 licence so you can work on HF. I was very lucky that i could choose the callsign PA4BEN.
That's why you find my name in the call!
So the real work just started. At the moment i worked 64 countries on HF so you can see i just started !!