I became interested in Amateur Radio recently through my granddaughter who wanted to join her dad (my son-in-law) as a Ham. She was only ten and the classes were offered on a school night and lasted too late for her to make her bed time. So my wife and I agreed to take the course and relay the information to her after school the following day. The system worked quite well and she passed the test handily. While taking the classes for the Technician license we became interested and decided to take the test too. We were asked to take the General test when we passed the Technician, then the Extra. Our granddaughter declined the opportunity but my wife and I went ahead. We passed them all! So we went from nothing to Beth AC8ET and Bill AC8AA in one testing session. Later that month we purchased tri-band hand-held radios, set them up in our cars with external antennas so they could also be used as mobiles and began to learn how to use them.

While wintering in Arizona we attended hamfests in Yuma, Scottsdale and Phoenix and put an external antenna on our motorhome so we could use the HTs there too. The following Spring we attended Hamvention® in Dayton, Ohio, met a lot of great folks, and learned quite a bit too.

We've joined several radio clubs:

ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League)
DARA (Dayton Amateur Radio Association)
WCOARA (W Central Ohio Amateur Radio Association)
MOCOARES (Montgomery County Amateur Radio Emergency Services)

and participate in some amateur radio nets on local 2-meter repeaters. Soon we hope to become involved in public service events.

We have been working hard to get additional certifications. So far:

Emergency Communications I, II, III
ICS 100, 200, 700, 800.

AC8AA and AC8ET participated in their first Field Day with the West Central Ohio Amateur Radio Association. We supplied the AC power from our motor home's 7.5kW Onan Quiet-Diesel. That gave ample current for the radio power supplies.

We also paid a visit to the Bellbrook Amateur Radio Club.