When I was a child, I wanted to be an amateur radio operator so bad I could taste it. I fiddled with old radios and re-purposed them. I once had an old RCA Brown Bakelite that could pull in stations from around the world after I jury rigged an antenna and used the tuning capacitor from another old radio to make it resonate. I loved listening to the BBC, Radio Netherlands and Radio South Africa and dreaming about going there someday. I would have loved to transmit and read everything I could about it. But there was no money for fancy equipment when I was younger and later in life there was no time.
I got a limited amateur license in 2012 and didn't do much with it. In the past couple of years I began doing more. Recently, I decided that radio was a bucket list item and if I was ever going to do it now was the time. So, last month, I bought a modest long range radio and took the upgraded license exam to operate it last weekend. For you few who may be interested the radio is an ICOM-718. Just a basic HF rig. 100 watts SSB, AM, RTTY and CW. Not a lot of bells and whistles. But, it appears to be a very solid little radio and it is easy to operate.
The antenna itself is a 66 foot end fed long wire strung through a fork in branches of a large tree in our backyard. End fed long wires have been popular in Europe for a long time but I got a bit of skepticism here when I talked about buying one. So far, the arrangement has worked as well as could be expected. This morning, I talked to the East Coast from Connecticut to Miami and around lunch time had a nice chat with a fellow located a few miles from the Canadian border in northwest Montana. This afternoon, I even talked with the actor Alan Wolfe who was transmitting from his home in Miami.
There are a lot of old men in amateur radio. And, they have old man conversations. The weather, doctor's appointments, holiday plans, etc. But, there is more than that. Early this morning, I was welcomed like a long lost brother to the Navy Amateur Radio Club on 40 meters. After that, I listened in for a while on a group of RV owners who keep track of each other by ham radio. They were very professional, handling relays like pros. This afternoon, I listened to a bunch of ex-Northrup/Grumman employees. Their net controller was operating the station located in the National Electronics Museum in Baltimore. He could have been next door.
I would have given anything to do this when I was a kid. And, I'm glad to say that this is one of those childhood dreams that has come true and I am enjoying it thoroughly.
73's. (That's ham talk for best wishes.)
No comments:
Post a Comment