My Ham Radio Story
When I was very young (7 or 8 years old), I took an old battery-powered radio that my Mom used as her everyday radio, mounted it in my wagon, and built some crazy antennas with some wire I found in the garage. This radio had short wave bands on it and imagine my surprise when I started hearing radio broadcasts from around the world in foreign languages. Of course, it had nothing to do with the antenna I made, but I was hooked on understanding how radio waves could propagate. This was the inspiration for my QSL card.
Fast forward to the Mexico City earthquake in 1985. My sister and her husband were in Mexico City on vacation at the time. All of the communications lines were out and it was impossible to call to check on the status of people in the area. I was 15 years old at the time and my father and I went to the station that was operated by the 3M Employee Ham Radio Club. We gave one of the staff my sister’s name and the hotel that she was staying at and were asked to wait. I watched as operators were handed the lists of names and they relayed these to operators in the Mexico City area. About an hour or so later, our name was called and we were told that an operator in Mexico has made contact with someone who had ridden their bike to the hotel she had been staying at and this person reported back that the hotel was not damaged much at all. She had been checked in at the hotel as being ok. I was amazed at how efficiently messages could be passed and how a radio signal could communicate that far. I wanted to know how to do this!
I knew that to get my ticket I would have to learn Morse Code. I tried unsuccessfully several times to learn it and gave up trying to chase a ham radio license in frustration.
As I was starting college, the Internet was starting to take off. For the next 25 years or so, information technology, and specifically data networking, kept my interest in technology.
As we moved into a world that can’t operate without technology/real-time communication, I started spending more time thinking about what happens when all of this hyper-communication doesn’t work anymore? I am not necessarily a prepper by any means, but I found myself interested again in how communications worked in the 100 years before the Internet.
So here I am. Jumping into a hobby that is 100 different hobbies. I love building antennas, creative methods of powering my rig, digital modes, and meeting/sharing with others in the hobby.