My dad obtained a First Class license between 1946 and 1948 through a school in Kansas City.Famspear wrote:I started with the third class license, then passed the test and upgraded to the second class license. I had planned to eventually go all the way for the First Class, but the FCC changed the rules so that, at the last place I worked, I could legally baby-sit the transmitter with only a third class license. So, by that time, I was "overqualified" (at least theoretically). Good thing. I really didn't want to study for the first class exam.
If you're not a old radio broadcaster, this may not mean much to you, but by the mid-1970s, many broadcast-quality radio transmitters (the actual physical piece of equipment that creates the powerful radio wave and feeds the signal into the broadcast antenna itself) were almost completely solid state (and thus, fairly stable), with the "vacuum tubes" being used in the final RF (radio frequency) stage of the transmitter. Signals were stable; no "tuning" required. Pretty much the only thing the FCC licensed operator had to do was take meter readings every three hours.
He worked with the Iowa State Police, then worked as Chief Engineer at several small town Iowa stations. One station asked him to sit in as a disk jockey, and he didn't care for that.
We moved to Pueblo, Colorado in the summer of 1957, and dad continued to work there, in Longmont and at KTLN in Littleton, before moving back to Iowa in the summer of 1959.
He loved the engineering, and later, he serviced a couple of solid state transmitters.
By the way, this is a guy who obtained his first amateur license at age 13. My favorite story, as a boy, was always how he had built a radio from a potato (using it was the crystal).
Them's were good old times! I hold an amateur radio license but I'm not general class yet.
Thanks for the memories, and if you want to be an idiot on the radio, I'll let ya.
