Did he even make the slightest attempt to get a General class license?

What kind of HF beam antenna have you set up inside your apartment?  Please describe. 

Ah yes.  I fondly remember the days when the principal 2 meter traffic in the DC area was dozens of hams announcing that they had crossed a bridge over the Potomac "N3DF mobile 3 now mobile 4." 

Overreliance on canned messages has been a subject of discussion since the RTTY brag tapes of the 1950s.

Great.  Will be looking for your signal on the AE cw bands.

I like to string a dipole between trees and/or structures when I'm portable.  Works great and costs $0-$20 depending upon what's in the shack junk box. 

Paul Krugman's "Friday Night Music" blog posting on the New York Times' "opinion" website has a video of the Canadian group "Arcade Fire."  The drum (shown near the beginning) clearly has the amateur radio black diamond (with the circuit elements in the middle) on its face.  Anyone know why?

Jim, I agree with this.  Nevertheless, the day I passed my General code and written in the New York City FCC office was one of the great days of my young life.  I just don't think most new licensees get or understand that feeling anymore.

I planned for the exam at least three months in advance.  I was a high school junior.  I made at least 200 Novice CW QSOs and also listened to code records or WIAW code practice every evening.  I also spent two weeks virtually memorizing the essay answers in the ARRL license manual.  In my entire pre-college experience, my parents only let me ditch classes on the day I took the train into New York to take the exam.  On the way home, I honestly felt superior to everyone else on the train because the federal government had authorized me to own and operate a 1,000 watt short wave radio transmitter.  I was walking on clouds for a week.

I'm not any better than someone today who may pass all three exams based on a few days of  working the Q & A lists.  However, I doubt that they will attach the same value to the license that I did (and still do).

73 de Neil N3DF

I wrote the 1912-1950 portion of the wiki entry.  It cannot be improved.

Amateur Extra First Grade licensees were folded into Class A when the Federal Radio Commission created the A-B-C license system in 1933.  Amateur First Class licensees with "unlimited radiotelephone" endorsements were also folded into Class A.  This endorsement had been created to allow "ordinary" licensees to use the restricted radiotelephone bands without the necessity of taking the 20 wpm cw test (they had to pass a special examination on radiotelephone subjects).  Amateur First Class licensees without the endorsement were folded into Class B, which ultimately became our present General class.  Class A licensees, of course, eventually became the Advanced class.  Incidentally, Amateur First Class was the third name for that class.  It started out as Amateur First Grade, became Amateur Class, then Amateur First Class.  The names were to distinguish it from hams who did not show up before government examiners.  Those names over time were Amateur Second Grade, Temporary Amateur, Class C, Conditional.

Classic troll post.  Content-free.  Intended only to provoke. 

I knew a bunch of 1960s and 1970s Technicians who didn't know A from B in code.  Knew a bunch of Conditionals who were the same. 

When I first started working the entire Federal civil service used the 8x10.5 (two hole punch) standard, which I understand was a leftover from the 19th century.  We converted to 8.5x11 (three hole punch) early in the Ford administration.  Threw out a lot of file cabinets!

Is your Extra certificate really 8x10?  Mine (and all of the others that I have seen) is 7x9.  It is an odd size and it was hard to find a frame that fit well. 

More importantly, what type of HF antenna will you erect and where?