Originally published in the September 1988 issue of the Collector and Emitter.
It might have been overlooked in all the excitement at Ham Holiday ’88 (what with Tondelayo modeling that thing she wore in the style show and all), but Homer Klott did NOT take the novice test. Again.
Homer, faithful readers will recall, is the ultimate nerd who caught the great Q. R. Zedd, A5A, in an expansive mood after the annual Christmas party of the South Canadian Amateur Radio Society many moons ago. Zedd was saying he could take any person and teach him the secrets of amateur radio, and that was when Homer appeared out of a freezing mist in the parking lot, CB radio dangling from his ear, to take the great one up on his offer.
Zedd, world’s greatest DXer, had no choice but to follow through. He soon invited the cement-headed Homer to Honor Roll Ranch, just a hoot and a holler south of town, to start him on his lessons.
Homer quickly proved to be a problem. It took him four months to learn Morse for the letter T. Ten weeks later, when he had the dit for E down fine as well, he had forgotten the T. Theory was worse.
Zedd, between DXpeditions to the North Pole, the birth of his first son, and other distractions, has stayed with Homer’s education, however, and thought his protege might be ready to take the test at the hamfest.
Puffing an oom-Paul and rapidly adding to the world’s stock of crushed Coors cans, Zedd gave the nerdly one an oral test just a few days before the convention. It went like this:
Q. Give me Ohm’s law.
A. Home’s law is pie are squared and cornbread are round. That is why it is Home’s law, because you can’t get no better cooking than at your own home, God bless it, amen, ten-four?
Q. — What is DC?
A. — DC is in Washington, and that are where they is both the White House and sometime other. It is similar to the FCC, which is at the Gettysburg Address.
Q. How many license classes are there for amateur radio?
A. There is two.
Q. — Two? Did you say two? Tondelayo, go in the gun room and get me my –
A. — Forty roger! There is upper and lower. The upper is like the two meters and the lower, is seventy-five! Two is upper more than seventy-five because the number is backwards from what you would expeck! Like when your ground loop is on the wire and your aerial is an inverted vee!
Q. — No, don’t get the .45, Tondelayo. Somebody hold me back. I am going to be calm. I am going to be calm. Okay. Fine. Homer. Think hard now, son. Give this one your best shot. What is an A-1 transmission?
A. An A-1 transmission is when you start off and it don’t slip or slide and it shifts real smooth, and when you come to a stop it don’t clunk or make other funny noise and it don’t leak on your driveway.
Q. — And F-1 would be…?
A. The right stuff.
Q. — What?
A. — The right stuff! Like what’s his name, he sells Delco batteries and stuff now, Yeager! He flew them F-1 right through that sonic thing! Boom! Shazam! And they thought he had crashed only he hadn’t crashed atall on account of he had right stuff!
Q. — What does a resistor do?
A. — Go to Canada on account of you don’t want to get drafted.
Q. – And a capacitor?
A. — That are how many it holds, like OU’s stadium holds I think about 75,000 capacitance.
At this point Zedd’s chair went over backward and he ran toward the gun and hunting trophy room, trailed by your reporter and his nubile bride, both of whom were trying to stop him.
Behind us Homer cried: “Hey! Don’t you want to ask me about them inductance? — I know that one, tool That is when your resistance don’t work and if the draft is on and they catch you, they take you downtown and you are inductance into the army!”
Tondelayo hit Zedd with a flying tackle just as the great man hauled a thumb-buster out of his cabinet and started punching big cartridges into the chamber. Your reporter turned and fled back into the hamshack to grab Homer and haul him out of there, Things had turned serious, and the best that could be done, while Zedd was being delayed, was to drag Homer down into the bullrushes beside the big bass pond and hide him there.
Buried low in the weeds, we passed several hours before things quieted around the ranch house. It was impossible to keep Homer quiet. He was so keyed up, the propellor on his beanie kept rotating even after I took the battery out.
Homer did a memory dump. Everything else he knew about amateur radio and electronic theory. Here are just a few of the things he explained:
1 — A dipole antenna is so called because the guy from Warsaw who invented it was killed in a fall during test installation.
2 — A diode is what the dead Pole left in unpaid bills.
3 — Circular polarization is an ad sent out by the elves who work for Santa Claus at the North Pole.
4 — The maximum allowable power for a novice station is 200 horsepower.
5 — A GasFET is the procedure by which a radio operator converts his station from electricity to natural gas.
It came as no surprise, after these and other revelations, to learn that Zedd soon afterward:
A — Had forbade Homer from taking any test at Ham Holiday (and had tied him up in the smokehouse to make sure), and
B — Had taken off in one of his experimental private airplanes to clear his head.
As is well known, Zedd did return in time to appear at the Ham Holiday banquet, though in such a clever disguise that few of us recognized him,
When last heard from, Homer was still in the smokehouse. His ropes had been untied by then, but he said he wanted to stay in a while longer since everything seemed clearer there.
— KU5B