More new Hams

[electricflyer]

I am a ARRL VE team leader in the NW Atlanta area. Also a VE for CAVEC and W5YI groups. On Saturday January 24, 2014 we had our final class for General license upgrades and had 10 people take the exam. Of the 10 we had 7 that were successful and are now able to get on HF. Then on Monday the 27th we had our regular monthly test session. We had 7 people come in for exams and we had 7 people pass their exams. We now have 4 new hams that passed the Tech exam, 2 upgrades to General and 1 make it to the top and pass the Extra exam.
For any of you that are in the area of Dallas, GA on the 4th Monday of the month and want to upgrade or take a Tech exam please stop by and see us.
For more information just go to the ARRL.ORG web site and look under "Exams" Actually there are exam sessions every week in the Atlanta area somewhere. My team may be the only ones to test on a week day (there may be one other but I can't say for sure). Most test on Saturday or Sunday. I get the people that have to work weekends a some of those come for quite a distance away.
For other information about our test sessions you can go to: www.pauldingarc.com
See you there.
Marv
KT4W

[Radio]

Congrats on the new hams, very good work on you guys part.

:bigclap:

[Andy N1ORK]

My congrats to the new hams too! I am also a VE and have given my share of tests from Tech to Extra. I also just realized we have 687 members......awful quiet for a large group.

So, who are we rooting for tonight? Being a NY Giant fan from CT, I have to root for Eli Manning's brother Payton and the Denver Broncos.

Maybe this will stir up some noise.

73!

[NN5I]

Me, I'm rooting for the Super Bowl idiocy to be over for another year. Pro sports teams serve no real function, do not return the loyalty of their victim-fans, and are a true ripoff.

[Radio]

It's about the commercials, Carl. :D

But there is a reason college stadiums are larger than Pro stadiums. College games are more fun. Period.

[NN5I]

College games are more fun, I suppose -- but college sports are as pointless as pros. I went to a university to learn, not to a football team to watch mindless goons compete in doing utterly useless things. Hyped-up college sports are a shameful distraction to the purpose of any university. When not hyped up they're great for the participants. I root for my Florida Gators sometimes, but if the NCAA teams were eliminated and UF concentrated on what universities are actually for, I would be glad.

[Andy N1ORK]

Carl,
I'm not big into pro sports either, I only watch the Giants. I do prefer college sports, especially basketball, soccer and football. There would not be any pro sports if they didn't have fans paying exuberant ticket prices, ditto for the college sports also. I enjoy competition and competing like we do chasing DX for DXCC or competing in contests. Just think if ham radio got so popular that companies would be willing to pay money for advertising during a DXpedition or other contests like CQWW. I think if that ever happened I would quit ham radio.

[NN5I]

Just think if ... companies would ... pay money for advertising during a DXpedition ... I think ... I would quit ...

Yeccch. Me, too. We agree, but I'm more extreme.

It'd be like what has happened to the Internet. Almost any web site nowadays has, in each page, a couple hundred bytes of actual on-topic text and megabytes of obnoxious ads. Pages that should load in a second take sometimes several minutes, only because they load (some of them) fifty or a hundred ads to go with a couple dozen words of content. It's most destructive.

Thank goodness, it hasn't happened to most aspects of ham radio (although QST for example seems about 75% ads). But if those people prevail who want to increase the number of hams without limit, dumbing down the tests to do it, it will happen. I'm fortunate -- too old to last that long.

Remember when Christmas was just Christmas? Nah, we're both too young to remember that.

[electricflyer]

Another successful test session for February. We now have 3 more new Techs and one new General. One person made it by the minimum correct answers and one standout that missed 1 question on his tech exam. I told the other VE's that he had help with the exam. They asked why I said that and I told them to take a look at the name on his jacket. It said "Archdiocese of Atlanta" so he obviously had help. He passed his General and missed only 2 questions on it. He said it was touch and go if he would be able to make the test session. He does hospital visits and is on call for preforming last rites and he got a call on his way to the test session but fortunately was not an emergency. I told him a ham license would come in handy if he gets a call as a missionary in Africa. He said he would love to go.

We always encourage everyone to take the next level test if they pass. Most don't do well but on occasion we have a reluctant tester pass the General. Most say they never studied for it but at least they get an idea of what they need work on. Those with an electrical/electronics background naturally do better since they breeze through the technical questions and only need to learn rules and regulations.

They usually ask, "which questions did I miss". We don't note any of that so we just say 5 and 13 or make up some other number. We tell them the FCC only wants to know if it was a pass or fail and that's all the tester needs to know. Kind of like a doctor. Was he at the top of his/her class or the bottom. Makes no difference they are all Medical Doctors.
Marv

[Andy N1ORK]

[QUOTE=NN5I;11891
Remember when Christmas was just Christmas? Nah, we're both too young to remember that.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I'm sure glad we're too young to remember that. :whistle:

[KF5BET]

We also encourage the test takers to go for the next level if they pass. Doesn't hurt to try and at least you get an idea of what's on the test.

A couple of months ago, we had a couple of guys come in to take the exam. One started out at zero and walked away an extra, the other started at zero and walked away a general. They are using their license to fly FPV airplanes (first person video).

These guys came back the next month and gave a presentation on what they do and how they do it. Amazing.

ANYWAY...... It's always exciting to see someone new enter the hobby!

[ChuckW5KAV]

I as well am a ARRL VE, last month our team tested 22 people which 20 where
firemen/women 19 passed tech an one general. The other 2 who failed retested
this month and passed along with 15 others. Its great to see our small city
supporting amateur radio, our ARES group now has equipment in all the
firestations, police department, city hall, water and electric building. The county
as well has pushed to install amatuer radios on all thier county firestations buying
all the radios, antenna's and coax for such.

[electricflyer]

In April 1-4 the National Association of County and City Health Organizations will hold it's annual Emergency Preparedness Summit with several thousand people attending. One of my fellow VE's was contacted about conducting a CRAM session for those wanting to get a Amateur license. He is N1MN and is a certified ARRL instructor. He has done several webinars and will do a 4 hour session at the summit. We thought there may be a very large number of people for a test session but it looks like it will be somewhere around 20-24. The Kennehoochee Amateur Radio Club in Cobb county will have a station(s) set up at the summit and will be a special event station N4P. They will issue QSL's requested by the contacts made. Information for the schedule - http://preparednesssummit.org/ham-radio/ If you have your rig tuned on April 2nd or 3rd make a contact. They will be on most of the bands HF, UHF, VHF, Dstar and echolink. The location for the summit is the Ritz Carlton Atlanta (downtown). There may be more people that will test that didn't do the Webinars since other organizations have conducted classes. If you are an ARRL VE and in the Atlanta area on the 3rd of April they may have need for your assistance. They will test from 12-4pm. You can contact Elden N1MN at: [email protected] for more info.

FYI - as of March 15th the number of licensed amateurs is at an all time high. 775,542 - of which nearly half are techs, there is still one licensed tech plus. Also a little over 14,000 novices and just under 57,000 advanced licenses. Both license classes are reducing in numbers since they are no longer issued. Generals number 174,328 and Extra's 137,797.