The OperatorI was first licensed in Ohio during the 70s as a novice. It took the better part of a year practicing Morse during my lunch hour with one of the first volunteer examiners - Don Ortman WA8NFT. I passed the morse test but never tried to go on the air. Because of family responsibilities, I allowed my ticket to lapse. Many years later I found out that I could take the General exam and use my novice ticket to grandfather the element 1 requirement.
Now I had no idea where any of the paperwork was, but I did find a person who had a Call Book that had an entry for me. He copied the page and emailed it to me and the VEs accepted it for Element 1. I passed my Technician and General exams that day and went back a month later to pass my Extra exam. I can't say thank you enough to the ham who provided the call book page. Unfortunately, I have forgotten his name and I really want to thank him publicly. <update 4-26-2010, I found the name of the Ham who looked in the old call books for my data. Steven Melachrinos W3HF...Thanks Steven>
I enjoy working PSK and have used that mode almost exclusively since I built my first interface for it. So far I have worked 45 states on 20 Meters using only PSK. If I could only get the so called easy states to my East so I could work on Hawaii. Seems odd that I can't get Hawaii but am able to work Asian Russia, Kwajalene, and other areas but Hawaii eludes me. I have heard the submarine museum ship in Hawaii but never could break the pileup.
