December 17, 2016. Pearl Harbor Hawaii, Ford Island.

75 years and 10 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor the Emergency Amateur Radio Club (EARC) in Honolulu, an ARRL affiliated club, held the second Amateur radio test session aboard the USS Missouri. Testing on board this historical ship seems to be a popular event as our section manager received a special request to conduct it on board.

We are happy to report six new operators passed the FCC Exam and will be granted Amateur Radio Licenses to operate on the appropriate bands for the licenses they achieved. All six tested for the entry-level exam, Technician, and two of the six took the exam for the extra class license and passed. A three-person ARRL Volunteer (VE) Exam team administered the exams.

We had people testing for a myriad of reasons. A general license operator from Texas, Matt, KE5WRU, had read about the testing on board and it coincided with his vacation to Hawaii he had to sign up for the Extra examination. A young teenager, Hunter, who is interested in propagation on 2 meters and HF took the Technician examination. He was impressive to be talking about propagation at that young age.

One gentleman, Joe Morrison, flew in from Hong Kong and took all 3 exams and passed. He plans on retiring back to Hawaii in the summer of 2017 and wanted to do all the things he did as a young kid. We also had two military guys take the exam, one Navy and one Army. The Army person works MARS and needed to upgrade to General.

VE Team: Joe Speroni, AH0A, the Pacific Section Manager, Julius Vea, AH6VE, and Stacy Holbrook, KH6OWL.