I scored 31/35 on the Technician Class exam on Saturday. I've been hammering the FCC license website ever since, waiting for my call sign to (finally) pop up. Well, today all that F5'ing finally paid off:
KT3LAN will be transmitting live from the streets of Washington, DC, during the American Spring. The following is a list of OAS frequencies and repeaters, so you'll likely find me somewhere in here:
2 meter simplex: 146.520 146.580
2 meter repeaters: W3ETX : 145.1100 (-.600 offset, no tone) W3DOS : 145.1900 (-.600 offset, 151.4 tone) K3VOA : 147.0450 (+.600 offset, no tone)
In the era of American state-run media, what a treat it is to follow Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald. Their cogent, unbiased and relentless research and analysis are beacons in the MSNBCABCCBSCNN darkness. They walk the walk, too: Scahill likened his "Dirty Wars" journey to a "three year counter-terrorism Truman show", and Greenwald was forced to fight the illegal detention of his boyfriend in the U.K on Snowden-related charges.
It gets even better. These two All-Stars have teamed up to form a journalistic equivalent of JSOC: A digital magazine called The Intercept was unveiled on February 10, and its mission is to provide "fearless adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues." That's badass. While the rest of the PC Amerikardashian media focuses on minutiae, our generation's Woodward and Bernstein are going to be a plasma torch on the genuine issues.
This particular quote by Scahill makes The Third Lantern glow more brightly today:
"There's
a reason why journalism is the only specifically cited job outside of
government jobs in the Constitution. That's because if the three
branches of power collude together against the interests of The People,
the press is the fourth estate. Journalists have an obligation to take
an inherently adversarial role toward those in authority, in the service
of the public good."
Like Rome, America isn't a place so much as it is an idea. Hell, that was one of the coolest things about the Revolution: Men and women who'd traditionally identified themselves as stalwart New Englanders and proud Georgians (and every other colonial calling in between) joined together over a notion, a principle. They'd didn't all scramble to one location and proclaim themselves American; our germ was not geography, it was ethos.
Hearing the story about the California school banning American flags on Cinco de Mayo served as a reminder. The Republic isn't being assailed by armies and armadas, it's being subverted by a collective counter principle, an inverted ethos. It may not happen in a week or a year, but rights erode into privileges, and privileges into restrictions. How many intrinsically American tenets have changed since you were a child?
Even stone gives way to wind. As Marcus Aurelius tells Maximus, "There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only... whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish. It was so fragile, and I fear that it will not survive the winter."
Rome's successor has reached a similar crossroads. Will you be the philosopher, the warrior, the tyrant? Or will you be the Citizen who gave America back her true self?
I've wanted to try HAM radio for quite some time. I bought the entry-level study guide (Technician Class) several years ago, but like most of my great ideas, it gathered more dust than steam.
This past summer, my interest piqued again. After doing a little digging, I discovered that the cost of a handheld transceiver didn't contain any round numbers. In fact, it would cost less than 100 rounds of 22LR. I'm not sure if that speaks more to the affordability of the former or the exorbitance of the latter, but I happily purchased a Baofeng UV-5R+ on Amazon for $35.
It's compact, sleek and intuitive to operate. The learning curve on programming frequencies was a little steep, however, but it eventually became second nature. There are many online resources, too, and they've proven to be very helpful.
My next step was to find a local radio club and hopefully a mentor who could guide me. The kind gentlemen at W4CQ promptly replied to my inquiry and invited me to attend their weekly open house. I got to meet their members, was given links to the online study guide and received direction on how to best prepare.
After a week of studying and taking the practice exam, I'm consistently scoring in the 90's. Believe me when I say that if a semi-Luddite like me can do this, anyone can.
Confident that I could now pass the Technician Class exam, I made a reservation with the York County Amateur Radio Society (YCARS). Their next available test date is February 15th, and all that's required is $12 and a photo ID. Upon passing, I will then be granted a call sign by the FCC and permitted to transmit above 30MHz.
As the Million Vet March proved, there will not be fair reporting of the American Spring by the state-run media. It will be up to Citizens to share the truth, and for as dramatic as it may sound, that's a pretty heady thing. I'll have my smartphone and a solar charger, but if cell phone service in Mordor becomes unavailable, word will still get out.
I scored 31/35 on the Technician Class exam on Saturday. I've been hammering the FCC license website ever since, waiting for my call sign to (finally) pop up. Well, today all that F5'ing finally paid off: 
Hearing the story about the California school banning American flags on Cinco de Mayo served as a reminder. The Republic isn't being assailed by armies and armadas, it's being subverted by a collective counter principle, an inverted ethos. It may not happen in a week or a year, but rights erode into privileges, and privileges into restrictions. How many intrinsically American tenets have changed since you were a child? 
