[NLRS] Happy coincidence K0AWU

[Arliss]

Congratulations to Bill.  As I mentioned in a private email to 
Bill, it was a different world back then.

I was first licensed in April of 1968 as a Novice.  I 
subsequently got my Advanced license, then some time later 
followed that with a marathon session at the FCC office in 
Portland, OR, when I took my Amateur Extra, First Class 
Radiotelephone with ship radar endorsement and Second Class 
Radiotelegraph tests all in one day.  Normally, the commercial 
and amateur tests were administered on separate days, but they 
let me take them all in one day since I had to travel quite a 
distance.

The cw test for the Extra and 2nd Class Commercial licenses 
involved both sending and receiving plain text at 20 wpm and then 
you also had to send and receive coded groups at 16 wpm for the 
2nd Class Commercial.  At that time some of the questions on the 
written tests required you to draw schematics of basic 
oscillators and some other circuits.

Ahh, the good old days(?).

73,  Arliss  W7XU



On 4/8/2014 5:20 PM, Dr. Gerald N. Johnson wrote:

> Back in the day we started (you were 15 months before, but a year
> older for that first license) there was no benefit to the Am
> Extra other than some bragging rights. The FCC was not even
> moving at a snail's pace taking typically 10 weeks after the test
> administered (and graded) by their district engineer to issue the
> license and a week to ten days to mail it. I took the general
> exam in August and the license was dated late October. In
> Missouri the FCC office was in Kansas City where they tested hams
> once a week but only came to St Louis four times a year.
>
> Besides the 20 wpm code requirement, you could not take take the
> extra test until you had held the general class license in hand
> for two years. There were study guides but the question pool was
> a FCC secret. At the same time the question pool for the
> commercial licenses was published by the USGPO. I took the second
> telegraphy and first phone commercials two years after taking the
> general (but had only read the second class sections of the Q&A
> manual), but had wait another quarter to try for the extra. So I
> played hooky from school two days in a row to take the ships
> radar endorsement and the extra in the fall of 1958. The extra
> exam covered the details of FM, AM, TV, SSB, and I think RTTY
> while the commercials were still testing for late 1930s
> technology, no FM, no TV, no SSB, just AM for the phone license
> and included modulated power oscillators for CW. I still haven't
> qualified to test for the first telegraphy, that required a year
> at sea as a second op handling traffic.
>
> I started to college about a year after passing the extra with
> lots of questions to ask poor grad teaching assistants who didn't
> know radio at all.
>
> My dad and I passed novice and general together, he didn't get
> the extra until 1968.
>
> Long about 1976 all the extras that had gotten the license
> without extra privileges were allowed to request two letter
> calls, with a check for $70 attached to the request. I got the
> first one on my list. A few years later they refunded that fee to
> those who requested it back.
>
> There has been a definite tendency of contest stations and DX
> peditions on HF to stay in the extra sub bands where there is
> less activity which has driven the popularity of the extra class
> license. Today you can find a volunteer examination group,
> probably at least once a month within 50 miles and take all the
> available exams in one sitting.
>
> 73, Jerry, K0CQ