Yeah, I remember Cotton's reputation.

Luckily, when I went to do the exams, he must have been out of the office. 
There was an assistant engineer there; he let my dad read the regular 
questions.  He came in to do the diagrams.

I remember him describing a oscillator circuit to me.  When it got to the 
third question about that diagram he says "Oh Shit!  I gave you  the answer 
to this question."

The question was what type of transistor is depicted in the circuit?  He had 
already told me it was a PNP, but I told him that you could distinguish a 
PNP from a NPN by the way the arrows were pointing.

Steve, K8SP
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ronald E. Milliman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, June 03, 2013 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: I passed!


> Re the current FCC ham exams...
>
> The exams that are given today are quite different from the ones that I
> took, and frankly, the once today I would find a bit challenging without
> doing a fair amount of preparation, but I suspect the ones some of us old
> timers took, many of you younger hams would find pretty challenging too.
>
> All of the exams I took had diagrams or schematics on them. I remember
> trying to describe to the FCC Examiner in the Detroit office, circuits in
> sufficient detail that he could draw them out for me, and that was one 
> hell
> of a challenge. When I took my Advanced and Extra exams, my objective was
> to do so well on the other questions that I could just skip the diagrams
> and still pass. Fortunately, that strategy worked. I passed the 20 wpm 
> code
> test, but I sure wouldn't want to take it today! At one time, many years
> ago, I could copy around 35 WPM, but today, I'd be lucky to copy 10 or 15
> WPM. <lol>
>
> I sure think the flexibility in taking the FCC ham exams that exists today
> is a huge improvement. Since I lived within 75 miles of the nearest FCC
> field office, I was required to take my exams at the field office. The
> first time I took my own reader, but the FCC Engineer in Charge wouldn't
> let me take the exam with my own reader; he made me take the exam with one
> of the FCC people that were there. Nobody liked that FCC Engineer in 
> Charge
> of the Detroit office. I'll never ever forget his name which was Mr.
> Cotton. He was one of those people that if he even smiled, his whole face
> would probably shatter! <lol>