Is five call signs some kind of record?
My interest in Amateur Radio began around 1970, back when I was in High School (and still had hair). My first call sign was a Novice call, WN4EKG. I started on my Worked All States (WAS) Award on HF CW!
When I upgraded to Advanced a little while later, my call sign changed to WA4EKG. Since my call sign had changed, I had to start over again, this time using a mixture of CW and SSB.
A couple of years later I was doing well over 20 words per minute and got my Extra. I couldn't resist applying for a shorter call. I got KC4J (Kiss Chickens 4 Jollies) and stared over again on my WAS.
Then life's priorities interrupted — college, jobs, marriage, babies. I did the unthinkable. I let my 2x1 ticket expire!
In June of 2002, I was out jogging in the park and ran across a local ham club doing Field Day. (I always loved Field Day — and the amazing taste of grits and eggs cooked in bacon grease after operating all night!) They let me operate their GOTA (Get On The Air) station for a couple of hours, and I was hooked — again!
Three weeks later I passed all 4 exams in one session! I kept my fourth call sign, AB1BK, for only a few weeks before getting my fifth and final call sign — W1AI. I won't let this one expire!
Zero to Extra in 3 weeks
When I started studying for the exams again, I was happy to find online study materials. (The terms "PC" and "Internet" had not been invented when I got my first ticket.)
However, I quickly became frustrated with the online practice tests. They seemed to deliberately focus the easy questions, while rarely asking the one I needed. Of course, this is merely the nature of random exams.
Think of it this way. As test day approaches, if you know the answer to 90% of the questions, then 90% of the questions on a random exam will ones you know, and only 10% will be the ones you need to work on. In a random exam with 50 questions, you only see 5 that you need to study! See my frustration?
I had written some question drill software a few years back, so I loaded the question pools into it, and I had a much better tutor!
Some friends encouraged me to put my software online, so I did! That's how my ham radio license training website was born.
Can you go from Zero to Extra in three weeks? Well, it depends on how much you know when you start, and how much time you devote to studying. I still remembered quite a bit from having my Extra ticket long ago, and I studied really hard for those three weeks. It helped that I remembered Morse Code well enough that it took only a few hours of practice to get back well above the 5 words per minute requirement.
If this is your first license, and if you have limited time to study, it might take you more than 3 weeks.
Check out my website:
