On Jan 28, 4:25?pm, wrote:
On Jan 28, 8:48 am, wrote:

On Jan 27, 10:04?pm, wrote: On Jan 26, 6:44 pm, wrote: On Jan 25, 7:52?pm, Cecil Moore wrote:

Being
the only ham in a room full of grumbling commercial guys was a bit
unnerving . . sorta like "OK kid just do it and hit the road."

Those are just two data points, and if you went in the fall and
spring, you missed the big summer push.

Makes sense. I took both my Novice and General exams in the fall and
never even noticed any "big summer push".

It was when school was out and all us younguns could go downtown and
take the exams.
With good timing, three times in a summer.

When I went for the 13 wpm code (summer 1968), there were several
groups of four or five of us at the code table. When I went back in
1970 for the 20 wpm and the Extra written, I was the only one there
for that speed.

Back then the shipping industry was advertising heavily for radio ops
and Philly was a big port. The guys taking the commercial tests tended
to be on the shaggy side like sailors rather than white-collar types
looking for jobs at broadcast stations. I've always thought that
somehow this is why I got swamped by 'em when I took my exams

Sounds reasonable! Also, the office did code tests only two times a
week (Tuesday was
written-only day) and so you ran into them each time.

In any event, work overload at FCC was the cited reason for the
change.

The reasons they cited and the reality of it were probably two
different critters. Even back then it was obvious that the FCC was
working on getting out of the ham testing biz.

They went back and forth. In 1951 they restructured the licenses in a
way that would generate a lot more testing - then in 1953 they gave
all operating privileges to Generals and above. In '64 they virtually
eliminated the Conditional and did the incentive licensing thing,
almost guaranteeing a lot more work for themselves.

All the ham licenses
except Novice cost money - you musta just missed the fee thing in '68.
I think it was $9 back then.

That was during the incentive licensing thrash when the regs changed
monthly. I guess I got lucky.

Probably.

I swapped my old 2x3 3-land call for N2EY in '77 as well, when I moved
to the Empire State. Sequentially issued and free, not a vanity call.
Kept it when I moved back.T

There's another example of rapid-fire changes in the regs. When I went
for my '77 casllsign swap you submitted a list of the specific calls
you would like to have, w3rv was not a sequentially issued callsign.
You had to comb thru the print version of the callbook to find open
1x2 callsigns before submitting your list. PIA. My first choice was
w3ru but somebody ahead of me in the line got w3ru so I got my second
choice and became w3rv.

Yup. In 76 or 77 they opened up the N prefixes, and I got the 129th
one in 2 land. By 1979 they had announced that they would not reassign
1x2 calls - if I gave up N2EY, nobody else would get it. So I kept it.

I did the trip to Gettysburg with Nick k3nl. A couple years ago he e-
mailed me and told me w3ru had just become available and told me to go
for it.

Yeah, right. Not hardly!

Similar story here. N3EY was available for a long time but now
somebody has it.

73 de Jim, N2EY