I'm really working on getting my ham ticket. Everyone keeps telling me to just take the General. I may pass it. so after hearing from a bunch of friends I'm going to take the general exam along with the tech. From here on in until exam day I'm going to be glued to my general study book and practicing the tests on the computer. I never know I just may end up passing it. It won't be for lack of trying. I'm so excited about getting to talk to my new friends from around the world on the radio and through the internet. I'd love to be able to talk to the space shuttle while it flies over head. I was there when my friend Don did it at his house 5 or 6 years ago. He couldn't keep the contact going because his beam antenna was broken and he was rotating it himself out the window but he did hear is call come back to him. That was one of the coolest things I've ever heard with ham radio.

For practice making contacts I use a program call HamSphere which simulates the 80 and 40 meter ham bands with noise and crashes and other noise you would normally hear on the air. There is no RF being transmitted but you'd swear you were really talking on the 40 and 80 meter bands. The skip comes and goes and signals fade and come back in and you can hear real people calling CQ with morse code and you can talk to them like there were on the radios. It's awsome.