Lately I have been reading a lot of zombie books, you know, good old fashion blood and guts speculative fiction – like;  Moody’s Autumn Books, Frater’s – As the World Dies series, Recht’s – Plague of the dead series, Bourne’s – Day by Day Armageddon. Stuff like that – It made me aware, Again, of a Want I have wanted to do now for the last thirty’ish years ( give or take) –

To get my Ham License.

Way back once upon a time ago, my dad ( I think he still has it ) had an old zenith  tube radio of his he got from his dad, It looked like an old leather valise, black and well worn. Once in a while I would play with it, it was only AM, but I found it was a very wide AM and if you moved the  rod in the antenna coil it could tune in some way out of band stations, I could get China and some Spanish( South America) stations, and some, depending on the time of day or night and which way I moved the rod, England and Canada. That radio is what started it all. I wanted to hook up and talk to people all over the world on shortwave and  listen to faraway places that I would never ever get to see, but I could have a piece of them if I could talk and listen to them, Yea, ham radio was the way to go.

Great stuff, I knew about ham radio and the FCC License, and I tried to learn Morse Code, just couldn’t do it – so the want died down, But every once in a while I would get ambitious and get a study book from the library and try to learn code. Hell I have had the regulations and electronic knowledge down pat for about 20 years, it was just the dam code requirements. Killed me every time. To this day I can’t figure out why I can’t get the code. A few years ago I found out that the FCC dropped the code requirement, Cool – but I just didn’t have time to do it and soon placed it on the back burner.

Till just recently, and the dam zombie books are responsible……….. I started thinking how the hell could I get a hold of faraway friends and family members, all though I don’t think anyone in my family will ever get their ticket or spend the the money required to get them up and swinging. But I do have some net and face friends that will or probably will.

Just think, if the there is a Natural ( earth quake, tornado, you know mother nature on the rag type of stuff) or Un-natural disaster ( EMP, war, massive hack attack, zombies, mutant purple rabid lemmings), and the electrical infrastructure falls, how are you gonna communicate? Cell phone, nope dead, especially in the case of an EMP attack. Land line, nope the telephone companies battery banks only last for so long. The mail? What if you need help RIGHT NOW? Or just need to know the lay of the land or some bit of knowledge? Or coordinate a group for some reason, rescue or what have you? Radio is the answer, those of us who are a bit paranoid and have the resources, such as a generator and crap, can run a radio, 2 meter for line of sight and the shortwave for those long distance calls. According to the ARRL site there are several hundred thousand of us out their maybe millions in the world, And it is just not voice either, you can send text and graphic files over a packet network, send slow scan tv or graphics. Talk to the astronauts in the space station. The uses are endless. Radio – it’s the way to go.

So for many reasons, not just zombies, but mostly for the fun of it, I studied a few days and went on march fourth and passed the Technician class FCC license for ham radio.

Yep, even though I haven’t got the paper license yet, my name shows in the FCC ULS Database.

Here is my call sign,

KD0KRW

Wow – I finely did it and it only took 30 years. God, I am pathetic.

Oh and one more problem, I have no radio at all. Oh hell – do you know how much they cost, the license is good for 10 years, if I start saving now, in two years I should have enough for a good rig. Till then I will just have to join a ham club and hope some one will let my use his/her gear once in a while……………….

And now I have convinced my two oldest boys to study for the tech class license and I am going over the question pool for the general and extra classes and we will go down to Austin and take the exams on April 21. Wish us luck, Oh yea, anybody got any good ideas on a good rig to save up for?

Later, Zenlogic.

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