Tom and Phil,

Thanks so much for the stories and encouragement. I'm happy to hear that I
am not the only one who was so scared starting out!

73,
Megan KB3RGW

On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Phil Scovell <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Meagan,
>
> Your story reminded me of a friend of mine, long passed away now for many
> years, and he was an electronics genius.  I was 14 at the time I met him on
> the air.  He worked for Western Electric in Omaha managing computers as
> they
> stretched copper wire into miles and miles.  No fooling.  His job was to
> keep the computers, at either end, working at precision speed so the wire
> wouldn't break.  He was in his forties when we worked as novices on 80
> meters and soon became personal friends, going to World Radio In Council
> Bluffs together, and he put up my first tri band beam for me when we became
> generals.  Anyhow, we called him Tex but that wasn't his real name.  I
> found
> out that when Tex went to take his general test, this was when the FCC came
> to Omaha to give the exams once every three months, he was so nervous, he
> flunked the code test the first time.  The next time he tried, he kept
> breaking the led in his pencil, pulled his headphone plug out of the jack
> of
> the recorder, and about had a heart attack.  I think he took it three times
> before passing.  I know a man who took the general test 13 times before
> finally passing the written test.  When I went to take my general exam, I
> was last in line and two groups of guys, about a dozen in each group, put
> on
> headphones and took the code test.  The FCC examiner turned it up so loud,
> I
> could almost copy every letter sitting across the room.  In the first
> group,
> before the tape was turned on, a guy yelled out, "Hey, I can't hear
> anything
> coming through my headphones."  The examiner calmly said, "That's because I
> haven't turned the tape machine on yet."
>
> Phil.
> K0NX
>