Story I heard from many of the Pittsburgh-area hams, after I moved here: The FCC used to give their exams in the Federal Courthouse/Main Post Office building on Grant Street downtown. (They later moved them to the now-gone Holiday House building in Monroeville).
The exam room in use was located right above a bus recovery parking location. And at the time, either the building had no AC, or it wasn't working right. So, one hot summer day, they had the windows open during one of the code tests. Between the usually street noises, heavy traffic, and noisy diesel buses waiting to start their next run, no one could actually hear the code test. The test candidates pleaded to have the windows closed and the test resent, but allegedly, the examiner smiled and simply said "QRM!" And then he walked out of the room. ----------------------- The first time I went for my 13 WPM, I was living in State College. It was term break coming up when we planned this, so the idea was that two of us from the Penn State ARC would leave in the middle of the night, stop by one other club member's home in Harrisburg to pick him up, stop and have breakfast in Langhorne PA, and then walk in, bright eyed & bushy tailed, for the 8 AM exam. So of course, myself and the other driver left a little late with insufficient sleep, and the kid we were picking up overslept too -- his parents did not appreciate us ringing the doorbell around 4:30 or 5 AM! Because we were running late, no breakfast, but we did make the FCC office in Langhorne on time -- just (good thing there were no speed traps on the way!) We were all groggy... I washed out of my 13 WPM exam pretty quickly, the other two were going for theory upgrades to Advanced, and they didn't do any better... I made one other trip to the FCC Langhorne office a few years later. I had a day off, so I rode down with Dave KA3NQA (now KF4JGL) to keep him company. Dave was testing for his Commercial Phone ticket, and he was scheduled a little later in the morning. (And yes, he passed!) While he was in taking his test, I sat in his truck working some 10 Meter DX. I remember working EL7X on 25 watts, easily, and after making the QSO, I stepped out to stretch. Someone was looking over the truck with a jaundiced eye... asked me if I was a CB'er. When I told him I was a ham, he suddenly smiled and we chatted for a few minutes. Yup, I don't remember now who it was, but it was an FCC staffer (and a ham -- I don't think he gave me his call, though), and had I been a CB'er, I'd have been busted big time! (And I finally did get the card from EL7X a few years ago... right after I worked him, there was some civil unrest in Liberia, so my original QSL request never made it to him, but I finally tracked him down!) 73, ron w3wn Subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback, FAQ, problems http://njdxa.org/dx-chat To post a message, DX related items only, [email protected] This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org
