Pig License

I agree with you on that one Gadfly, I've wondered why don't they get rid of the courtesy tone from a repeater. Makes me not want to use it.

Of course I guess I could add in a doorbell key up I have to piss them all off and use it as an excuse to "announce myself" when I hit the PTT button....and tell them I'll turn it off when the courtesy tone gets turned off....but that won't happen.

 

It’s incredibly easy to get any of the licenses, Tech, General, or Extra. I got all three in one testing session.

No Morse code requirement any more for any of the classes of licenses and all the questions that the can ask you are in publicly available question pools along with the correct answers (http://www.arrl.org/question-pools). They are all multiple choice questions and the only thing that those giving the tests can do is change to order of the answers that you have to choices from.

Technician class license holders have some voice privileges on 10 meters, SSB only between 28.300 MHz and 28.500MHz.

I edited this to add that you should consider getting at least the General licensee as 10 meters is really only “open” (has “skip”) when we are at the near peek of a sunspot cycle. A General license would give you some voice privileges on a number of other HF bands that have activity even at the lowest sun activity.

We are coming off of a pretty week sunspot cycle and it will not be long before 10 meters will be a pretty dead band and that can last for years.

 

Most of the repeater controllers these days have a squelch noise eliminator built in. Get a full quieting signal into the repeater, and you can't tell if the person has finished talking, or is pausing between thoughts. It's not like you can look at the S-meter and see if they're still transmitting.