Another Good Man Discovers "The Project"
Mikey called a few minutes after my Q with my cousin, Keith, to tell me that he had passed the Tech and General license exams this morning. Evidently he scored pretty good. One of the VEs gave him a thumbs up & three fingers, possibly to indicate that Mikey had only gotten three questions wrong.
Which ain't bad for a university functionary with way more intelligence than most folks with PhDs, even if a couple of 'em do have ham licenses too.
Which is another story to tangential to get into right now.
The VEs also told Mike that their experience with returns on the exam results has been within a couple days to a week of finding out what call sign he got.
So, after having invested heavily in a hobby that he'd only been peripherally connected with & with no experience listening to the madhouse on 75m, Mikey is now on his way to being able to join in the myriad crack-brain conversations that he has only recently been able to hear.
Either he figured, having spent the money on the gear, that he should at least get the license or, as I suspect, he needed another project.
Little does he know that once you get into ham radio, the project subcontracts itself into a collection of cat litter buckets full of parts for things only half done before interest in something else came along.
Like crack brain conversations on 75m.
And since Mikey already has cats and dogs to keep him company while listening to those crack brain conversations, he probably has many empty cat litter buckets that he hasn't taken down to recycling yet.
Thus we can say that (a) Mikey should have a General license & call sign in his mailbox in a couple days and (b) he already has a complete station, including many antenna projects (which are another form of subcontracted main project) and (c) he's got parts and probably enough cat litter boxes to keep him busy for a while and (d) he's already got friends on the air.
See, back in whenever, Mike made a youtube.com video about some stuff he was hearing on the local (100miles distant) repeater one night. Many folks saw the video, sent him emails and coached him along about the license stuff. Some of those folks were members of the club running the repeater in question and they started mentioning Mike in their conversations on the repeater. So then it ends up with Mike having all these people who are anxious to talk with him, once he gets his ticket, which should be soon.
So Mike has the station, the brains, the ability to be easily distracted and he's got people want to talk with him, some of whom he's been listening to for, well, as long ago as his choice of radio arrived on his porch.
Me, I gotta go out and figure out how to raise the tower in the air (which may involve getting Mikey to test the winch on his truck), locate all the part for the 6m beam and cut some card stock for QSL cards when Mikey gets the paperwork. See, I knew there was another project in there: printing the cards.
My father printed my first QSL cards on his 12x18 Chandler & Price platen press with type set by hand. Now I get to print Mikey's on my 10x15 C&P with type from the 19th Century. Yeah. That old.
Age: the final project. These are the ramblings of . . .
Which ain't bad for a university functionary with way more intelligence than most folks with PhDs, even if a couple of 'em do have ham licenses too.
Which is another story to tangential to get into right now.
The VEs also told Mike that their experience with returns on the exam results has been within a couple days to a week of finding out what call sign he got.
So, after having invested heavily in a hobby that he'd only been peripherally connected with & with no experience listening to the madhouse on 75m, Mikey is now on his way to being able to join in the myriad crack-brain conversations that he has only recently been able to hear.
Either he figured, having spent the money on the gear, that he should at least get the license or, as I suspect, he needed another project.
Little does he know that once you get into ham radio, the project subcontracts itself into a collection of cat litter buckets full of parts for things only half done before interest in something else came along.
Like crack brain conversations on 75m.
And since Mikey already has cats and dogs to keep him company while listening to those crack brain conversations, he probably has many empty cat litter buckets that he hasn't taken down to recycling yet.
Thus we can say that (a) Mikey should have a General license & call sign in his mailbox in a couple days and (b) he already has a complete station, including many antenna projects (which are another form of subcontracted main project) and (c) he's got parts and probably enough cat litter boxes to keep him busy for a while and (d) he's already got friends on the air.
See, back in whenever, Mike made a youtube.com video about some stuff he was hearing on the local (100miles distant) repeater one night. Many folks saw the video, sent him emails and coached him along about the license stuff. Some of those folks were members of the club running the repeater in question and they started mentioning Mike in their conversations on the repeater. So then it ends up with Mike having all these people who are anxious to talk with him, once he gets his ticket, which should be soon.
So Mike has the station, the brains, the ability to be easily distracted and he's got people want to talk with him, some of whom he's been listening to for, well, as long ago as his choice of radio arrived on his porch.
Me, I gotta go out and figure out how to raise the tower in the air (which may involve getting Mikey to test the winch on his truck), locate all the part for the 6m beam and cut some card stock for QSL cards when Mikey gets the paperwork. See, I knew there was another project in there: printing the cards.
My father printed my first QSL cards on his 12x18 Chandler & Price platen press with type set by hand. Now I get to print Mikey's on my 10x15 C&P with type from the 19th Century. Yeah. That old.Age: the final project. These are the ramblings of . . .
posted by the Sparks at 10:22 AM
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