L. wrote:


A CHEAT SHEET???????????????

Buddy, if you're not ready for an exam, you're going to fail. Come to my
exams and be caught and the exam is OVER and YOU FAIL. And that is the least
you can expect. Being turned into the FCC for any possible action will be up
to them.

L.

Calm down, I thought maybe it was okay to have one.

They seemed to give a lot of latitude when I took mine about 3-4 years
ago. I was told I could answer some questions and "gist" the QSO if I
could not or did not want to copy it all down.

As it was, I probably had the best Morse skills in the room (including
the volunteers giving the test) when I took mine. The volunteers
running the test were having a lot of trouble getting the playback
system to work (about 10 headsets ganged up to a cassette player) and in
getting the tape rewound and staged to where they wanted it.

And their Morse skills were either poor or very rusty. So they said,
this is the test, get ready, go! But wound up starting the test with
the last quarter or so of the final practice QSO still going on and none
of the volunteers had a headset on at that point. I did not want to
raise a disturbance for the other (5-6?) testees so I simply started
copying down everything I heard and turned it in at the end.

After I took the written test they said I had passed the theory and code
tests and I was a Technician with Code.

It is another issue but I am a real bone head on theory and have some
trouble recalling tabular data that pretty much has to be memorized so I
did not pass high enough for the General. But I didn't whine about how
hard that was for me.

Maybe after we get done throwing away the Morse requirement we can throw
away all the info in the test that is not needed by people who buy
radios instead of building them. What about that?

And how about not having to memorize all the things that I would
normally and prudently look up on a wall chart or a handy reference?
I'm getting my first social Security check this month and it seems to be
affecting my memory. :)

But the bottom line is that when you have a structured group of people
that have learned something "the hard way" they expect everyone else to
go through the same hoops to join the group. And they are not always wrong.

I love the code and think everyone should know some. Maybe my 26 years
as a Navy cryptologist, with a good part of that involving the copying
of Morse code, is affecting my thinking. I still enjoy hearing "bens
best bent wire" sent in morse. Heaven forbid I should stumble off band
and hear a crusty old Radioman at NPL calling NPM with a "banana boat
swing" to his fist. I'd probably cry.

Cheers!

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jacker at midmaine dot com