Yesterday, I taught another of my one-day Tech classes at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, and I’m happy to report that 18 out of 19 passed the test. And, the one that did fail missed it by only one question.

One thing that I was really glad to see was the diversity of the group. Four of the students were women, and five of the students were teenagers! There were also a couple of 20-somethings in the group.

Three of the teenagers were part of the “Prestin Gang.” The Prestin Gang included twin brothers Bill and Ed, and three of their sons: Danny, Gilbert, and Matthew. Sounds to me as though they’re going to have a lot of fun as a family with the hobby.

At lunch, Ed Prestin told me that he’d been licensed before, and that he still had the Heathkit HW-5400 (!) that he built back in the 1980s. I hope the rig is still working. Some parts are no longer available.

My one innovation this time was to draw the figures on big sheets of paper and then tape them to the wall before the class. This worked out pretty well. The students didn’t have to make sense of my hastily-drawn figures on the white board.

Overall, this session  was an unqualified success. And a lot of fun, to boot.

One of the nice things about writing my “No-Nonsense” study guides is that I get e-mail all the time from folks  who have used them to get their first license or upgrade to General or Extra. This is very gratifying to me. Yesterday, I found two in my inbox, one right after the other:

Mike writes:

Thank you for your license study guides!  I have been studying the Technician guide and took and passed the test today.

After passing the Technician test, they said I could try the General test without having to pay more, so I took it.  Somehow (luck), I passed it even though I hadn’t cracked open your General guide yet.  I’m still going to go through it, though, to make sure I know all the important stuff.

I’m starting to learn Morse code.  I think I want to mainly operate in CW.

I love it that he wants to operate CW. Austin, wrote:

This is just a short note to let you know I took the Extra exam today and passed with a perfect score. Thanks for your Study Guide.  I loaded the PDF on my Kindle and read each night for a couple weeks.  Today was the result.

Congratulations, Mike and Austin!  I hope to hear you on the bands one of these days.

On the ARRL’s PR mailing list, there’s currently a discussion about recruiting truckers into ham radio. The fellow who started the discussion noted that he had talked to a trucker who not only was a ham, but also was actively recruiting other truckers by handing out information packets at truck stops.

There was, of course a lot of back and forth on this topic. Some thought this was a good idea. One fellow commented, “I think truckers would greatly benefit from our repeater systems, IRLP, EchoLink and D-STAR.  I also think it’s long past time to forget about our lost 11 meter band…We’ve had many exceptional ops who got their start on Part D Citizens Band.  We could get many more if we made the effort to be accommodating and patient.  The benefits outweigh the risks.”

Others worried that 2m might go the way of CB (as if it hadn’t already).

I’m all for it myself. I’m for recruiting nearly any group of people that could make good use of amateur radio. How about you?

This morning, I was reminded that 2012 marks the 100th year of amateur radio licensing. In his January 2012 editorial, K1ZZ writes,

August 13 [2012] will mark another centenary: the approval of the Radio Acto of 1912 that required for the first time that radio stations be licensed. Today, we take great pride in being a federally-licensed radio service that can only be entered by examination, but at the time, it was regarded as the end of amateur radio. Enacted  two years before the founding of the ARRL, the legislation was intended to curb amateur activity not only by requiring licenses, but also placing severe restrictions on private, non-commercial stations. In the four months following its passage, just 1,185 amateur station licenses were issued in the United States, representing a fraction of the stations known to be active at the time.

Well, I just checked AHOA.org, perhaps the best source for licensing data, and as of November 7, 2012, there close to 707, 000 licensed radio amateurs in the U.S. My how we’ve grown!

Now, we just have to get these folks on the air…