When I was in middle school, my buddy Ross introduced me to the world of electronics by lending me his Knight Kit “Ocean Hopper” regenerative radio. We also worked together building a flip-flop circuit provided to us by a “traveling roadshow” on computers when we were in 8th grade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was in 9th grade – junior high at the time – I was fortunate to receive the requested Knight Kit “Star Roamer” as a Christmas gift – still have that radio today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1967 I wrote into Popular Electronics magazine, which was offering “call signs” as a “Short-Wave Monitor Certificate of Registration<\/a>” for non-licensed receive-only hobbyists. At the time, they also coordinated with the FCC to reserve those call signs. I still have my certificate, and will eventually post it on my site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast forward to Feb, 1, 2020, when I took the Technical and General amateur radio exams administered by the Volunteer Examiners from the Four Lakes Amateur Radio Club<\/a>, and passed both with perfect scores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My call sign was originally KD9OVL. However, I also applied for an FCC “vanity” call sign – which is the same as the one issued by Popular Electronics in 1967 (without the “PE” portion, after the “W” prefix.). I’ll let you know how that turns out. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n UPDATE: As of 3\/10\/2020, my call sign is now W9IYN<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 73 (Amateur Radio lingo for “Best Wishes”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was in middle school, my buddy Ross introduced me to the world of electronics by lending me his Knight Kit “Ocean Hopper” regenerative radio. We also worked together building a flip-flop circuit provided to us by a “traveling roadshow” on computers when we were in 8th grade. When I was in 9th grade … Continue reading “After some 53 years, I am finally a licensed Amateur radio operator (“Ham”)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-hamradio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1454,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}