Forty-five years ago I did something that would change my life forever. I had no idea how much trouble it would cause along the way. But the ride has been an interesting one. Little did I know that pulling the back off of that little black AM transistor radio –to discover why it worked- was the first of many reasons to cause my parents to doubt my sanity and even want to disown me at times. But my fascination with all of those cool little colored components soldered to that board, looking like a little city in a box, has driven me over the years like no other hobby, interest or job ever has. In those days my parents and other assorted family members screamed and yelled at me for ruining perfectly good devices, all in the name of curiosity. Since then they’ve been paid back many times over by having me fix, repair and upgrade their electronic gadgets, saving potentially thousands of dollars on replacements. All in all I’m sure there isn’t one family member that would complain too loudly these days. And for this I am grateful.
God gave me the gift of curiosity. And fortunately He also gave me enough sense to learn from a few of my mistakes along the way. Not too long ago I ran across a t-shirt that would’ve worked nicely, serving as a warning label to all who might come in contact with me. I couldn’t help but buy one, if only for the humor factor on my next visit home to see the folks and grandparents. The simple black t-shirt sports a graphic of a screwdriver with the words
“I void warranties!”
A few years later my thirst for knowledge had grown into full-on pursuit of my amateur radio license. I bought a book from Radio Shack having pages held together with a cone binder. It promised to teach me everything I needed to know about electronics theory and morse code, to take me all the way to an Advanced level radio license. What it didn’t teach me was how to get beyond my mental block for learning to send and decipher the dihs and dahs of morse code. But as far as the radio theory, I was solid…all the way from base-level Ohm’s Law through playing around with some of my own antenna designs on sunny days after school. My soldering iron was a busy little beast, all the way into high school. But I never did conquer the morse code thing, so I never got to take the exam for my amateur license.
At around age 14 my family moved back to Louisiana from Lynchburg, VA. I began repairing and servicing electronic equipment in my spare time after school. It provided a great income until I was old enough to drive and maintain a “real job”. When “old enough” arrived, I got my drivers license, a job, and a girlfriend all in the same year. That left little time for pursuing radio. And my interests widened to include cars, engines and…well…I did mention the girlfriend, right?
Fast forward to 2014… I hadn’t paid much attention to radio –other than repairing them on occasion- for many years. My job is one involving lots of computers and even more travel than I can stand at times. After talking with a close friend who had recently obtained his “Technician Class” radio license, and finding that there were no longer any code requirements to get one, I decided I would go try taking the test just to see how much I remembered. I’ll admit that I did run through one of the online practice tests a few times, just to see if things had changed much. But as for studying any materials, I had little time for that and ruled it out completely.
On February 15th, 2014 I walked into a Bingo parlor in Irving, TX and after filling out some paperwork was handed the exam for Technician Class license testing. I was the last person into the testing session. Ten minutes later I was the first person finished. The kindly little old man who had handed me the exam asked, “Is there a problem son?” I replied with a question, “Is that the best ya got to throw at me?” He and the others at the table chuckled and began grading my exam. A minute later he looked up at me a little stunned and asked if I would like to take the General Exam while I was there. I declined that day, due to time constraints. But I promised to return soon. And I still plan to keep that promise.
As for the test…I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of satisfaction it gave me to be able to recall that stuff from so many years ago –especially when I can rarely tell you what I had for breakfast on any given previous day. Nor the feeling that I got when I called my Dad to tell him that I had finally done it. His congratulatory words weren’t needed, only the tone in his voice. My Dad has always been proud of my technical abilities and for this I am grateful. That pride has given me the strength to go on when faced with one failure or another along the way. And the strength to keep going at a technical problem when it really felt like more of a knock-down drag-out fight.
Funny but no one hardly remembers that little transistor radio episode anymore but me. When I put it back together and it didn’t work after my screwdriver had disintegrated the slug in one of those pretty little silver cubes on the circuit board, I think I hid it in the back of my closet in a paper bag to keep from getting in trouble. I’ve come a long LONG way since those days. Do I still void warranties? Not so much. But the companies that offer them usually never have to pay off with products I own because I refuse to wait on repair queues and usually do the work myself out of impatience.
Regardless, I hope you enjoy the blog posts. They won’t be coming out on any regular basis as I have little time to devote to the hobby. But from time to time I’ll post some odd insight or maybe a helpful hint or two. Maybe I’ll be wrong or maybe I’ll be spot-on with my post. Either way I won’t have time to debate, so comments are turned off. If you need to reach me you can drop a line to “comments” at this domain and it’ll get to my inbox (and maybe eventually even get read by me). No advertisements or spam please.
73,
David