On the weekend of Nov 30, 2019, we finally ran this year’s final HAM CRAM certification weekend, with 2 Venturers and 4 leaders surviving the weeknight meetings and making it to the final mad dash to the finish line.
We took over ylab’s maker space at the City of Richmond Hill’s David Dunlap Observatory for the entire weekend from Friday at 7 PM to Sunday at 7 PM. They only went home to sleep and maybe scream in agony.
Participants ingested a massive amount of study material, lame jokes, stories, junk food, sugary snacks and soft drinks. Laps were run around the building to fight off the dozies. Horrible weather on Sunday didn’t stop us.
Industry Canada Certified Radio Examiner John plowed his way over through the storm on Sunday afternoon to administer the final tests. John is a great friend of 8th Richmond Hill Venturers and Scouts, helping out every year to run the JOTA and any other time we ask him. He even went through a PRC.

We are proud to announce that all participants in the final ham cram passed the final test. Please join us in congratulating all six newly licensed amateur radio operators – Venturers Rishi and Zack and leaders Mark and Sandi from 8th Richmond Hill, John from 1st Markham MedVents, and Chris from wherever he hangs his hat. They are all licensed for life. They never have to go through this misery again.
To keep up with what is now our tradition, we celebrated on Wednesday December 4 with the other ham cram – in this case, cramming down a 10 lb ham.

Special thank-yous to examiner John for all the help and cool freebies he donated to the participants; and to ylab and the City of Richmond Hill for allowing us into such an amazing building for our work with the Venturers.