If I hadn't been there .......

I might not have believed it. On Friday, I mentioned in my post that we had a candidate for our monthly ETS of NJ VE Session that wanted to go from 0 to 100 MPH in one sitting. It turned out to be more like from 0 - 200 MPH in one sitting!

The Team arrived at 8:00 AM. The second candidate that had registered had informed me that he had taken an exam via an online session, so he had no need to come to ours. So the four of us sat back and were shooting the breeze when our guy showed up at about 8:45 AM.

Just from his demeanor, he exuded a quiet confidence. He was courteous, pleasant and calm.. He was well prepared, had all his materials ready and you could just sense that he was ready to go. We gave him the Tech exam and he finished rather quickly. He got one wrong out of the 35 questions, so we handed him another blank answer sheet and the General Class exam.

It was not long at all before he completed that test and signaled us that he was finished. This time, he got "a hundred" - all 35 correctly answered. We shook our heads in amazement and handed him yet another blank answer sheet and the Amateur Extra exam. This one took a little more time to complete, but when all was said and done he had another 100% under his belt.

I've seen this only twice before, and I've never seen it done so quickly. This person seems to know his theory quite well, OR he has a photographic memory and an uncanny ability to take tests. From the way he carried himself, I'm inclined to think the former.

What was amazing to us was that he accomplished his goal in less time than we've seen several people take to complete ONE exam. I thought there might be multiple payments to try alternate versions in the event of a particular failure, but not yesterday.

He will be an asset to whatever radio club he chooses to join and we heartily entreated him to find one near his home, which is a bit farther upstate NJ than here. In conversation, he also seemed to understand that taking tests and gaining real world practical knowledge are two completely different animals.  But still, 1 wrong answer out of 120 isn't anything to sneeze at.

I wish him well.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!