Discussion: ham license

I had my ham license for about 20 years before I really ever used it. I got it when I was involved in building human-powered airplanes, and we had several 70 cm radios for flight ops communications. I was told that I should get a ham license on a Thursday evening, I think, and I passed the test the following Tuesday night, which in those days included Morse code. I barely limped through the code section, but was told by the examiners not to worry, because now that I had my ham license I'd be getting plenty of practice listening to code, and I'd be good at it in no time. I'm sure I gave them a skeptical look, because I had no intention of ever listening to code, I was just getting the license to use fancy handheld walkie-talkies. In the end, the few of us who had bothered to get the licenses were not the ones who used the radios.

I almost used my license 10 years later when I was at the VMC (old name for WMOC) in Minnesota, and they needed somebody to man a radio for a while on the emergency crew. Somehow, the orienteer in charge of the whole radio operation knew that I had a ham license, and asked if I could do it. All I had to do was stand there holding the radio in case a call came in, which it never did, so I never had to press the transmit button and use my call sign.

Eventually I bought a radio after I had been hang gliding for a while. We use 2 m radios to communicate in the air and to the people driving the retrieve vehicles, so I actually use my license occasionally, though most of the time we use business-band frequencies or frequencies that are actually illegal (with modified radios) rather than legitimate ham frequencies. And I'd guess that at least half of the pilots flying with radios are unlicensed.

I just got mine a few months ago - KB1WXJ, the best scrabble hand you've never gotten. Picked it up to (legally) get a transmitter for mounting a GoPro on my RC helicopter. The MIT radio club gives the tests once and month, and it's dead simple. Multiple choice, 1/3 basic EE, 1/3 common sense, and 1/3 administrivia. 80% or better passes, no Morse code. Might even keep your dumbass from mis-assembling your antenna.

I prefer to remain independent of the Ham-ARDF subculture. If I got my license, I wouldn't tell anyone in the ARDF community to make it clear that I was there to compete, not talk about radios. Also, I don't want people appending or addressing me by a nonsense string of letters.

I don't mind if people address me by my call sign, because I'm likely to not be paying attention anyway until the last couple of syllables when they say, "Hey, N1EJJ!". (Vanity call signs are available, but I got mine by coincidence.) Fortunately, the hang gliding crowd is generally uninterested in discussing radios beyond questions like, "Hey, does anybody know how to make this damn thing work?".