[SOC] LOG and introduction

[Stephen W. Kercel]

Hi Bonnie, Bob and all.

I'm also new to SOC. First Licensed in 1964 as WN4SQD. Upgraded to General 
in 1965 (WA4SQD). Made Extra in 1967 (still WA4SQD; no Extra class 
callsigns in those days).

BTW, I got a Second Class Commercial Radiotelegraph License in 1966. I 
guess that made me a real SO.

I foolishly let all my tickets expire in the early 70s.

I attempted to retake the Extra exam in 1977, flunked the 20 WPM sending 
test (further evidence of my fitness to join SOC) and ended up with an 
Advanced.  Then FCC fouled up my paperwork, and after the intervention of 
my Congressman, I got with a temporary permit, that included Advanced 
privileges, and the exotic callsign WT4ABK, in June 1977.  (I was hotly 
sought after by WPX hunters that summer.) In the late summer of 77, FCC 
finally got my paperwork straightened out, gave me a real Advanced Class 
ticket with the "permanent" (actually, I only kept it for two months) 
callsign of WD4JRJ. I passed my next try at Extra in the Fall of 1977. (Did 
my deficient sending really improve? We'll never really know. The FCC 
dropped the sending test a few weeks before my second try at Extra. 
However, I did pass the 20 wpm receiving test that time.) In late fall of 
77, for the second time in my life, I was issued an Extra Class license. By 
this time FCC was giving two letter suffixes to Extras, and I got AA4AK. 
The callsign has no significance, no acronym or initials; it was simply the 
next callsign in the queue when my request was processed (Alas, all those 
cool ?4?? combinations were already issued by that time, and they had not 
yet started issuing ??4? callsigns.).

There is one thing I learned from relative ease with which I made Extra the 
first time, and the great difficulty that I had the second time around. I 
really was smarter as a teenager than as a thirty-something. The other 
thing I learned was never to let a license expire again, and a good thing, too.

Anyway, I was very active as a contester, a DXer, and in the politics of 
ham radio. After six fairly spectacular years, I got burned out on ham 
radio, and refocused on work, becoming inactive after July 1983. However, 
being wiser (if not smarter) than I was in the early 70s, I have 
religiously renewed my license whenever the due date came up.

In 2001 I moved from East Tennessee to Maine (Side note: Maine is very 
different from the rest of New England. People here drive pickup trucks 
with gun racks, with real guns in them, just like in East Tennessee, but I 
digress....). I thought about getting a vanity callsign. W1SWK was 
available back then. However, early in our marriage, my wife had made me a 
big needlepoint banner with several ham radio images, and  AA4AK in big 
letters in the center. Since the callsign had thus acquired romantic and 
sentimental value, there was no way I could swap it for a *1* callsign.

In 2004 the tables turned. I became burned out on work, and refocused on 
ham radio. I've now been active for a bit less than a year, and am a 
casual  contester, DXer, and constructor. I'm strictly CW, and primarily 
(but not exclusively) QRP. I avoid club and League politics like the plague.

One other colorful experience was my 1983 admission to the Farragut Amateur 
Radio Transmitting Society. (The acronym says it all.) Like SOC, there were 
no responsibilities and no benefits of membership. There was one 
qualification for admission; one had to be an ex-President (emphasis on ex) 
of a Knoxville area ham club.

Also, come to think of it, in 1981, I was initiated into the Royal Society 
of the Wouff Hong. I'm still not sure what the Wouff Hong actually is or 
how it is used. Evidently, it is not something you really want to find 
out.  The story is that the legendary "Old Man" uses it to visit 
retribution (the exact nature of which is never spoken of) on richly 
deserving lids. The Wouff Hong is apparently not cleaned after use, as it 
is reputed to have accumulated the blood of many lids over the years.

About a year ago, I joined QCWA, which seems to me to have roughly the same 
responsibilities and benefits as SOC, except that it recruits phone 
operators as well as CW. Oddly, being first licensed 41 years ago, I'm 
closer to HCWA than QCWA. Nevertheless, I'm one of the youngest and least 
experienced members of the Pine Tree Chapter.

As a non-SOC member, I participated in last Saturday's sprint, and made 
nine, count'em nine, QSOs. That is about as long a contest log as I care to 
submit these days. I still do all my logging on paper. I do not use a 
computer in connection with my ham operations (other than to swap e-mail 
with other hams during geomagnetic storms). Computers are an instrument of 
work, and ham radio is supposed to be not-work.

Anyway, given my licensing and operating history in ham radio, when Bob 
called my attention to the nuances of SOC, I experienced the dawning 
realization that "I'm home!" (This is what Antonio Damasio calls "the 
feeling of knowing.") I joined up a day or two back. Maybe someday, I'll 
get around to ordering the SOC certificate.

73, 72 and thanks for inviting me,

Steve Kercel
AA4AK




At 11:05 PM 9/13/2005 -0400, Bob Patten wrote:
>Jan Clute wrote:
>
>>Hmm, I was KN1RKG in 1961, Bob. Where were you? I was born in Florida
>>(Jacksonville) and raised in California (I was also WV6PFM that year, that
>>was the era of the 1-year terminal novice) and THEN found my way to cold
>>places like Massachusetts and Iowa (how SOC can you get?). HI 73 Jan N0AAA
>>(ex-KN1RKG, WV6PFM, WD0HWU, N0AYM, KF0Z, N0AAA, N0AG, NN0NN ... I think that
>>
>In 1961 I was W1GIV in Springfield, MA.  Moved to south Florida in 67 and 
>got W4OZF.  When the
>"N" prefix was made available in 1976, applied for and received present 
>call of N4BP.
>
>--
>73,     Bob Patten, N4BP                Plantation, FL
>
>E-Mail: n4bp at arrl.net                   Website: http://www.qsl.net/n4bp
>QRP ARCI #3412    SOC #1    ARS #799    SMIRK #6625          FISTS #7871
>
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