Monday, December 05, 2011

Ham I am

In 1987 we were about to have a baby, and I was working full time at Canadian Tire, and I was or we were, lay ministers in the local Mennonite church of 400. Each and every one of these was a full time job, sort of activity, but I wanted to add to that the dream I'd held for many years, of getting my Amateur Radio license.

I started to study, but a lack of funds and a real lack of time encouraged me to lay aside that dream for a  while.

Fast forward to last year when we found ourselves living in a field and most of our kids had moved on, and I needed a way to connect with a community beyond the blessed field people. It turned out that there were some Ham radio people in the congregation here and so I began to wonder and think and dust off an old dream of mine.

Yes, that old dream.

So last year I began to study when I had free time, so you know that those available moments ended up being too few and far between.

This year Andy, VE6KP and Randy, VE6RND from the church here encouraged me and checked on me just enough to keep me studying and that was a big help for me.

Then during my autumn holiday it was one of my goals to focus on studying the material so that I could maybe, perhaps, take the exam sometime this winter.

Andy got me the name of a Examiner down in Red Deer and today I met up with him at his home and I took the test. It was 100 multiple choice questions, and I was as nervous as I've been in a long time. After 45 minutes he came in and started through my answers.

No bad circles on the first ten questions, then there was one in the second ten, and so the tension inside me grew. He circled three more wrong answers and looked up at me and declared that I had passed, with honours. 96%.

Passing with honours allows me access to all the Ham bands, which was what I was after, but 96% was above and beyond my hopes and maybe even my dreams of 24 years.

So he filled in the paperwork and emailed it off and now I will wait for Industry Canada to send me my license and my call sign, hot off the press.

Another goal reached in my life and it makes me smile.




4 comments:

  1. Well done that man. Sometimes we have to gestate our hopes and ambitions for a long time before they come to birth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Herself is justifiably proud of Himself too. Nicely done, Sir :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Now you just need a bit of mustard.

    ;-)

    ReplyDelete



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