[trangus_1985]

It took me almost a decade to become licensed because I couldn't find any tests that weren't at 9am on a sunday, an hour drive away. Maybe that seems like a low bar, because it is!

But, I got into ham radio to do interesting things, and not communicate. After all, why bother with making sure you have line of sight to a repeater when you can just fire off a text message? I'm much more interested in telemetry, instrumentation, and remote control.

[tcmart14]

I dont think dropping the CW requirements were a bad move, as you mentioned it can be difficult to make a trip to a testing session. When I got my general ticket, I was stationed down in San Diego, which does have a pretty big HAM presence. Even then, it was still that hour and a half drive to a testing session.