Old hobbies never die
I come from a family of ham radio operators. As a kid, I fell asleep each night hearing Morse code or conversations with other operators from far off places drift into my room from the "ham shack" down the hall. My dad, my mom and my brother are all licensed. I too had a license, but when I moved in with Rob, the radio went in the closet and I let my license expire.

But a couple of days ago, I stumbled across the episodes of a TV show called Jericho which had a snippet of Morse code in each show and man, did that ever bring back the memories. It also got me to wondering if I could still pass the test and get a license again because even though my code is extremely rusty, I knew there had been a change and you could get a Technician's class license that didn't require the code. A little bit of research revealed that these days there is no longer a code element required for any license class.

Just for grins I took a few practice tests and although I have forgotten a great deal, I breezed through the Technician class test and discovered I could also pass the General class tests at about 80%. I need the General class license to get good use out of my old rig (if it even still works after sitting for all these years) since only it covers only a tiny bit of the bandwidth allowed for Technician's, but has tons of opportunities for a General class license holder. I've got some time to study up since the next exams are in September. It's on a Saturday when I'm scheduled to work, but I figure I'll either be gone from this job or will have figured out a way to get the time off. And to make things even better, exam day is also on my birthday so I'm bound to score well on the test, right?