Yeah, Lennie...Make room...Now that this hurdle has been
overcome, I am sure it won't be long before Brain get's his wish and
we further gut the written exams, too.

However, I did say you'd never get the license, but here you are.
It's a welfare license, but printed on the same FCC Form 660 as mine.
Congratulations.

Oh crap... All the FCC really gutted was the code, the writtens are
pretty much the same level of difficulty for the last 40 years. Sure,
elements 4A and 4B were merged to just a shorter element 4, but the
material you need to study and know is about the same. And as Len
pointed out, ham writtens ain't exactly rocket science. An Extra
license may be the equivalent to say a 4 credit college class. Or maybe
two 3 credit classes.

So...How long will it be before we ever hear you actually on the
air? Another decade?


He may have deed restrictions or landlord rules to deal with to put up a
decent antenna for HF. I've put up crude HF dipoles in the attic crawl
space above my top floor garden apartment. Find the access hatch
probably in a bedroom closet, use a pair of heavy weights with holes,
tie the antenna wire to it, and toss as far as you can get it in the
attic crawl space. Repeat for the other leg of the dipole. I used a
choke balun (just a big coil of coax to stop RF from traveling down the
*outside* of the coax shield) at the feedpoint. The autotuner in my rig
could load it. Once QSOed to a station in Antarctica on 20M using that.