Interesting, Rick.
I took the Novice exams back in 1965, when I was in high school. My
mentor, halfway
down the block (Harry, WA8PVA, SK) administered the exams.
In less than a year I traveled to Detroit to take my General exams in
front of "The Man."
Managed to pass both the General and, a couple of years later, the
Advanced exams
on the first try.
A lot of years passed and life got in the way, but I got back into ham
radio in 1995.
In 1997 I took and passed the Extra exams. Code at 20 wpm was still
required so I'm
a "coded" Extra, even though it was the VE team and not the FCC examiner.
I thought that the Extra theory test was a joke. I brought a calculator
and never used
it once. I know that the head VE, a good friend of mine, probably threw
the hardest
test in the bunch at me. It was nothing like the General or Advanced
exams that the
FCC administered, where I had to use my slide rule quite a bit
(pre-calculator days).
When I took my General exams, most of the guys in the room were quite a
bit older
and most were excellent with the code. However, the theory gave many of
them
problems. We knew only in general what the questions would be like - no
published question pools back then. Often equations had to be
rearranged and
units converted. A lot of these guys probably worked in the auto
factories, where
only an 8th-grade education was required, so they had not yet had algebra.
73 de Jim - AD6CW
On 7/4/2012 1:11 AM, Rick - DJ0IP / NJ0IP wrote:
I hesitated to throw in my "Extra Ticket" story, but what the heck. You
see, I failed the theory by one question.
I think that was in 1974. Maybe 75.
While living in Germany, I went home for Christmas only about every 5 years
or so.
I had not put any thought into taking an exam because here in Germany I had
full privileges, but I got bored sitting around the folks' house in OKC. I
borrowed their car, drove down to Dallas and took the General, Advanced, and
Extra without any previous studying.
Of the 20 people who took the CW test I was the only one who passed the
copying part, making just one mistake.
To my surprise the examiner had a Hallicrafters TO keyer and a Vibroplex
Iambic paddle.
He offered to let me use it.
I sat down adjusted the speed to about 28 or 30 wpm, sent BENS BEST BENS
FEET which we had practiced a lot in the Army and within about 5 seconds he
said "you passed". Of course 10 years of being net control in NTS cw nets
prior to moving to Germany had not hurt.
I did manage to upgrade my Conditional to an Advanced, but I regretted that
I had not bought a license manual and studied.
As a result, I did not get my Extra ticket for another 30 years, in 2008,
after I moved back to Oklahoma. Of course CW was no longer required so yes,
I'm a "No Code Extra".
The second time (2008) I was much smarter. I bought a license manual, but
still flunked the theory by one questions. Turns out a new question set was
released in July and I had studied from the old manual. So I bought a new
license manual, and passed the test on my third attempt, one month later.
73
Rick, DJ0IP
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