Congratulations to Chris on successfully sitting the Club’s first on-line remotely invigilated Foundation Exam.
Chris originally contacted us asking about how to get into Amateur Radio. Being a night-shift worker, he was unable to attend our normal Foundation Course lessons held on Club nights; so we pointed him to the established Essex Ham On-Line Foundation Course and made plans to bring him into our current Foundation Course for Practical Assessments and Examination.
That was before Covid-19/Coronavirus impacted everyone’s lives.
Covid-19 threw the plans into disarray until the RSGB changed the delivery of Foundation Exams, allowing remote invigilation and home exams at the Foundation level. When this new process was introduced we immediately took advantage and helped Chris organise his on-line exam for the morning of 28/04/2020.
We are pleased to report that Chris successfully sat the exam passing, with a good margin, at the first sitting and is now waiting to apply for his new Foundation callsign. We will announce the callsign as soon as Chris has it.
We have already helped Chris program a VHF/UHF handheld so that he could listen around whilst waiting for his exam and have helped him choose some initial equipment. Once Chris has his callsign he plans to be active initially on VHF/UHF either from his narrowboat on inland waterways or mobile while making his night time delivery runs.
This has been an unusual approach for us and we would like to thank Essex Ham for their well established on-line Foundation Course but particularly the Examinations Team at the RSGB who have gone above and beyond in altering the established processes to create and accommodate these remotely invigilated exams at short notice.
At these times, when social contact is limited, Amateur Radio can provide a degree of safe real world contact for people of all ages, occupations and situations as exhibited by the RSGB “Get on the Air to Care” initiative, and we look forward to welcoming Chris into the fold on-air.
