5 Years of Being a Ham
On December 7th, 2020 - I took my first amateur radio license exam to get my Technician class license. Two days later, I was licensed as KO4JZT and began my journey as a ham radio operator. I'm a couple of weeks late, but December of 2025 now marks the 5-year anniversary of this first ever ham radio license and I am so proud of what I've done in the hobby.
Less than a full year later, in April of 2021, I tested and obtained my general class license. 3 months later, I obtained my Extra class license, applied for the WW0CJ vanity callsign, and became a volunteer examiner for others to get their license.
In the past 5 years, I have:
- Been a member of several high ranking contest teams, including NJ4P's North American Record-Setting WPX RTTY 2024
- Spoke on QSO Today about youth in amateur radio.
- Went to Ottawa, Ontario for Youth on the Air summer camp.
- Re-founded the amateur radio club at my university after several years of dormancy
- Logged over 4000 QSOs on FT8 and SSB with over 100 countries using remote access HF stations.
And definitely more that I forgot to mention. Over the past year I haven't been active on the air as much - mostly just participating in local nets and activities for the past couple of years as I work through finishing university and getting my degree. But this hobby has been life-changing for me - without discovering it, I never would have pursued a degree in electrical engineering, I never would have met so many amazing hams from all over the world, and I never have discovered the magic of radio.
I'm grateful to this hobby for everything it has given me over the years, and I hope that in the coming months I can be a more active participant and continue giving back to it in the same way it has given back to me.
To any of my fellow operators and friends reading this: thank you for making amateur radio such a wonderful hobby. Without your kindness, mentoring, and innovation - we would never be seeing the kind of work in radio that we are today.
For those interested in the hobby but haven't gotten into it yet: I urge you to set aside worries you might have and jump in! It is a daunting world of knowledge but I promise you that you will learn so much and have so much fun playing with radios.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hopefully writing another one of these in 5 more years.
73, WW0CJ