To earn a Technician or higher license, you must pass an examination on electronics and radio operating practices. In this area, the tests are offered at 10 a.m. on the second Saturday of every other month in Morton Hall at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The Brunswick County Amateur Radio Society conducts the tests for the FCC on the third Monday of each month in Shallotte. There is no age requirement. Hams can be as young as John Brier or as old as Garland Brown of Wilmington, who just earned his license at the age of 89.
Hams come from nearly all walks of life.
Most tend to be men, but an increasing number of hams are women, such as Linda Tate, a co-founder of the Wilmington VHF Society, the region's largest single ham club with more than 200 members. While Morse code is no longer required, novice hams have to learn a good-sized vocabulary of abbreviations, many of them shorthand abbreviations left over from amateur radio's early days. Most QSL cards are fairly plain, with a state map on one side indicating an operator's hometown, but many are highly decorative. Yet ham radio isn't all fun and games. Military families are well aware of MARS, the Military Affiliate Radio System, a network of volunteer hams who help the Defense Department - especially in patching calls between servicemen and women in remote locations with their spouses and relatives back home.