PSA for HAM Radio license holders

I am good till 2026.. I have the highly coveted 1x2 call
K7XS since 1996.

I doubt I will need to worry about a gov issued piece of paper when mine is due next.

Get the extra, its worth the education for whats coming. Plus the extra knowledge & related will help in building your own gear, or buying what others say can't be fixed,...Laughing. My last boat anchor cost 20 bucks, and took 85 Cents to fix. The ability to build your own shit from other peoples throwaways/junk, might come in real handy at some point. Besides, buying 300 bucks worth of parts, for 5 bucks is a win any/everywhere.

My step-grandfather was big into ham radio. His local club in Plano, Texas would try to see who got the farthest contact.

In fact, my study of electronics started in 1975 with his back issues of The Radio Amateur's Handbook. Then, of course, books on transistors and the new hot thing, VLSI.

When I was in 12th grade, he gave me a high school level primer on Einstein's fearing of relatives, I mean Theory of Relativity. And taught me the short-cut to single variable differential calculus.

That was all neat but I also liked playing guitar and started teaching myself to do that in 1974. I only had my mother's old folk guitar given to her by my father who had been a music major at the University of South Dakota before transferring to UCLA. A new set of nylon strings and Mel Bay's Book of Chords.

But I would also study operational amplifier circuits and astable multivibrator circuits. And he built a bread-board computer that programmed in hexadecimal with an H-P kit.

He had a nice Kenwood base station and a 20' tower in the back yard,

I don't use my radios at my house.

Transmitter finger printing to call sign is a real thing,...