[CW] FCC TESTING

[Tom Chirhart]

HA.... FCC Testing......reads like a horror story.... here's another ....
Over two decades ago while I was a First Class Radioman stationed at the
Coast Guard Radio Station New Orleans, LA/NMG, a certain "Sparks" often
listed/shown on wanted posters in various Post Offices with the name of "Mad
Dog QLF Ring" convinced me to take my Radio Telegraph Exam.  Upon being
transferred to Coast Guard Radio Station San Juan, PR/NMR, and studying
Edward M. Noll' Marine Radiotelegraph Operator License Handbook, I proceeded
to the FCC Offices in San Juan, PR to take the exam... Upon arrival I
informed the ladies that I was there to take THE Radio Telegraph Exam...
they were confused, they thought I said Radio Telephone Exam, they did not
know of a Radio Telegraph Exam.... after asking around, they found out that
YES there was such an exam, and ventured about looking it up and determining
the requirements.
After a long period of time, they called the Radio Telephone examinees to
the testing rooms, and there I sat for what seemed hours.
The problem was that they did not know how to administer the code test.  It
had been so many years that they forgot how to administer the exam.  After a
few phone calls, a lady proceeded to a closet and pulled out a box of junk.
Inside she found two old Ameco or Bud two tube oscillators, each one had one
good tube and one broken tube.  She asked if I could fix one.  After a
couple of minutes and some AC applied, I grounded the two terminal screws
and the oscillator came to life.  Further digging located a beat up old
brass hand key, less screws and cable.  Further digging in the closet
located an old desk lamp and with a pair of scissors, a zip cord cable was
fabricated.  Now the tough part.... who was going to give me the exam?  No
one there knew code and the only one that could copy code was at their
monitoring site..... after a length of time and a few more telephone calls
it was decided that I would take the CW sending exam which would be recorded
on a cassette recorder.  An employee would grade it later..... After a
couple more telephone calls, the receiving exam was administered by the
staff... A few days later I received a telephone call stating that I passed
the exams....
I'll tell the group another FCC story in the future...
73/SOC Tom K4NCG

----- Original Message -----
From: "David J Ring Jr" <n1ea@arrl.net>
To: <cw@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 8:40 PM
Subject: [CW] FCC TESTING


> I have heard the story about the "evil" FCC man who reverberated the
> morse off of warehouse type of walls being "like radio" but that isn't a
fair
> test.  Very Very few of the commercial operators could copy a
> reverberated CW signal like that.  That only happens when having Long
> Path and Short Path (or some type of multipath) and it TERRIBLE to
> copy.
>
> It goes for C
>
> DAH DIT DAH DIT dit
>
> With the last dit being the echo of the DIT just preceeding it.
>
> E's would sound like I's, N's like D's.
>
> Absolutely TERRIBLE.
>
> Plus any decent FCC test had HEADPHONES!!!
>
> GIVE ME THE OLD DAYS OF AMECO CODE PRACTICE
> OSCILLATOR TUNED TO 500 CYCLES AUDIO AND HEADPHONES!!!
>
> 73
>
> David Ring
> N1EA
>
>
> -30-
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CW mailing list
> CW@mailman.qth.net
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
>