KF7DMO

Last week I took (and passed!) the Technician level test for Amateur Radio. I took a 6 week (three hours once a week) course through the local ARRL club. (I think that's Amateur Radio Relay League. I think.) The first class was the introduction. The second class almost had me in tears. The third class started getting better, and by the 5th week, I was thinking this might be an actual possibility.
It is really hard to get back into the habit of studying, let alone reading something to learn. I pick escapist literature normally because #1. it helps me escape and #2. I don't feel bad about putting it down because of the latest calamity and I can pick it back up again without having lost anything.
There is a manual, and much like math text books, it has all of the answers in the back. The testers draw from that pool of questions for the tests, so in theory, you can just memorize the answers. Many of the Am. Rad. clubs have websites that have handy practice tests. I would spend about 7 hours a week taking those tests. By the end, I got pretty good and I was understanding the material. I think I got the easiest test presented to us-- there were at least three different versions dispersed among the 10 of us taking the test. Everyone in the class passed. Hooray for us!
My new call sign is KF7DMO. I can call on the 2, 6, and 1.25 meter bands and the 70 cm band. I talked on the Maple Valley Stake net last night. Today I got my first radio gram, which is when someone can't get ahold of you on the radio, so they have someone who has the receiver capacity pass a message on. Dan hasn't gotten one of those. A guy named Brooke who took the course with Dan got two. Perhaps it is the gender that does the trick for getting radio grams. There aren't a whole lot of female hams.
While I will probably never embrace it like Dan has--- I really prefer to spend my allotted $$ else where than on radio equipment-- it's not a bad hobby/source of emergency preparedness. The community here does a tremendous amount to get its citizens ready for emergencies. Lots of opportunities to practice and get training. In case of a large scale disaster, the government shuts down all phone lines, including cell towers to reserve all radio waves for emergency aid. The only ones to get through-- like during Katrina-- are the Ham radio operators. I join that proud group. And if you talk to the old ones, they have the best stories to tell.....