KD9NDJ here.

Got my ticket, and now I’m hot to trot.

Facebookers of mine know all about it, but here’s the literary version:

I actually studied for something finally. I hit the books, took practice tests, scratched my head over difficult concepts, and drilled down. In the end I got 34 out of 35 correct. The test was my first taste of the Twin Cities Amateur Radio club. There were four members present and Debbie Fligor seemed to be the official Volunteer Examiner. The test takers were a mixed bunch of about a dozen. The first four to arrive, after I did, were college students, three women and one man. Ot maybe it was three men and a woman. Another older fellow like myself, a middle aged couple arrived late… The word on the Facebook page was that eight of us passed.

My ticket showed up in the FCC database about ten days later.

This past Thursday night, I listened in on the K9CU ham net @146.760 Mhz. (That’s 2 meters, folks.) I recorded this with Broadcastify on a laptop while listening on my Baofeng. After awhile, I got the hang of the protocol, but since I don’t know how to get the Baofeng to send the access tone (menus… I hate menus), I was just listening. I’ll attend Tuesday night’s club meeting and see if I can’t get somebody to show me how to do it.

There was stuff going on in the parallel 70cm band, and Broadcastify aired that also, on the 2nd channel of a stereo track. I separated the tracks in software after the fact and recorded selections to the Webcor, which I’m still exploring.

Then I joined the ARRL…

…since now I have a ticket and a call sign.

KD9NDJ