Sometime last year, my XYL was heard asking my son if he still had the radio book that he used when he did the Foundation exam. He couldn’t find it but I asked her why she was interested and she said that she was thinking about doing the radio exam as well. I must stress that I’d never pushed her to do this, it was totally her own idea.
We couldn’t find his book so at the RSGB Convention last year, I bought her a new copy which she read and re-read over and over again. She did struggle with it as she’s not technically minded at all but very often I would walk into the front room to find her reading the book.
We talked about it and decided that she wouldn’t be able to do a course over a few weeks as she would struggle to retain the info so I kept my ears open for any local club running an intensive training course over a weekend and soon discovered that the Thames Amateur Radio Group were planning a course. They’d had a ‘trial run’ using friends and the dates were set for the next course. I booked Susan on it.
At the end of the first day, she sat a mock exam which she failed. In the evening, we spent a lot of time going through the questions she got wrong and I explained to the best of my ability where she’d gone wrong and helped her work out the reasons why. She sat four more sample papers that evening and passed all of them with her best score being 23/25.
The second day was largely a recap of day one and all the practical stuff. I returned at the end of the day to find that she’d passed her Foundation exam with a very respectable score! Susan has now been issued with the callsign M6SHU and I’m so proud of her for having made the decision by herself to do this and follow it through.
@Susan: Congrats!