Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, I remember my dad studying code to get his amateur radio license. That was in the long, long ago when code was required for any license at all. Having a young family and being in the Air Force ended up delaying him getting his license. Fast forward to a few years ago, when after retiring, my dad decided to pick up that task again. He got his Tech, General, and finally Amateur Extra licenses and we talked about radio on and off.

I’d often thought it would be a good idea to have a secondary means of communication for when cellular services fail in any kind of civil crisis. Having grown up in Tornado Alley that vulnerability was always present. September 11 showed us again how the simple crush of humanity trying to communicate can cripple traditional communications systems. Even CNN’s website had to result to a simple plain text page that paraphrased said “cnn.com is experiencing abnormally high traffic. We can’t keep up and this is all we can show you. Check CNN TV or your local news channels for further information.” That lasted about a full day. All of these events in my history underscored the need for communications beyond traditional means.

With all of that in my back pocket I finally decided to get my license. I took the Tech exam, and had looked at some of the General questions on https://hamstudy.org/ so I went ahead and took the General exam, which I then passed. So now I’m studying for my AE exam, so I can be like dad. 🙂

73,

KJ5BPB