Saturday, November 09, 2024

Visitors from Colorado

I got home from work late last night.  I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and was eating at the kitchen counter when my cell phone started ringing. I looked down at the display and the call was coming from Colorado. The only persons that I know in Colorado are Steve WG0AT and Tim K0UR and I'm pretty certain that neither of them have my cell phone number.

It turned out to be a woman who is in the Tri-State area with her teen aged son, who is having some oral surgery done by specialists in Manhattan. She told me that they've been here for a while and have also both been studying for their Technician Class licenses for a while. She looked up the exam schedule and was calling me to see if there was any room for them in our session that we had this morning.

Wow! Up to this point, we only had one candidate scheduled, so there was room a-plenty! I sent her my standard candidate e-mail and she responded that we would see them this morning.

And we did!

They were both obviously well prepared as they both got only three answers wrong on their respective versions of their tests. Since they passed, we gave them their free look at the General exam, and as expected, got about 1/2 correct. They were both very gracious and thankful and mentioned that it was nice to get out of Manhattan for a bit and that they really liked what they saw of New Jersey.  I suspect that visitors from other parts of the country expect the NorthEast to be one big concrete jungle.

Our other candidate, who made a second try at Extra came up 2 answers short of passing. So close! I asked her how she was going on practice exams and she told me she was coming in at about 70% correct. I encouraged her to study a bit more and told her that when she consistently scores in the 80 to 85% range, she'll be ready.

Other than that, there were just chores to be done and no actual  on the air time. Maybe that will change tomorrow. But having those two guest candidates from Colorado come in AND get their licenses - THAT made my day!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

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