Radio and Electronics (Part 5 of 12)

One afternoon I was in my room in the basement. It was about time to go upstairs and check on the mail. My three-year-old brother Christopher came to my room and brought me an envelope. It was from the FCC! I picked Christopher up and kissed him on the cheek. I tore open the envelope and their was my license! And my call letters were on the license, WN7BVH.
I was nervous. I waited for Dad to get home before I made my first call on the radio. I wanted him to share in this moment. I had decided long ago that I would use the forty meter band on my first time on the radio. I started sending CQ, (da dit da dit dad da dit dah) which is the signal meaning, “Is any body out there listening?” In Morse Code and using abbreviations I said, “CQ, CQ this is WN7BVH, ok.” I repeated this over and over. After doing this for some time another operator finally heard me and answered back, maybe out of sympathy. We exchanged RST which stands for readability, signal strength, and tone quality. We also told our QRM which is the abbreviation for location. Then we signed off. And I recorded all the information faithfully in my station log book. Then I looked the operator up in the call book and sent him my post card (which I had printed myself) called a QSO card. This was to confirm our radio conversation. He also sent me one and I planned to line the walls of my “ham shack” with them. (My amateur radio shak. I had the same feeling that Billy in the book Where The Red Fern Grows might have had with his hunting. I wanted to get up early in the morning like 2:00 am and work the ionosphere and talk with people in far away lands. (That was like hunting late at night for racoons.) And I wanted to put up my QSO cards on the wall. (That was like Billy in the story and putting racoon hides up on the smokehouse door.) Everything to me was amateur radio.