Hamming it up

Well here it is three years since my last post. I should hang my head in shame. But I won't, because it has been a busy three years and I've been living it rather than finding time to write about it.

Among other things I got bitten by the amateur radio bug again. I was a pretty active ham operator in the late 1960s and 1970s, but then went on to other things including some major life changes. Now I'm settled down in a nice far suburban home with plenty of trees. Tall trees. Very tall trees. Such trees are ideal for putting up wire radio antennae. More about that later.

At any rate I hit the books in 2014 and passed the Technician Class and Extra Class exams to get my license back. AC2OX is my call and I've spent the past two years exploring some aspects of the hobby that didn't exist when I last had a station on the air. For one digital modes such as JT-65, JT-9 and PSK-31 that couple computers to ham radio transceivers thus taking my long term interest in computing in a wildly new direction.

The FCC dropped the requirement for morse code proficiency more than a decade ago enabling more people to get licensed without struggling with an archaic form of communication. But guess what! A large number of old timers like myself, are "pounding brass" to keep an old artform alive. Hopefully some younger members of the hobby will get interested too. I never excelled at code. I fact I couldn't attain the 20 words per minute required for the Extra Class ticket in the old days. And maybe I never will even with new electronic keyers and all the other do-dads available today, buts that's ok because there are plenty of others that send and receive at more moderate speeds to "rag chew" with.

Younger people, like my children, ask what with the internet and texting via smart phone would I want to get into ham radio again? They just don't understand and perhaps never will. It's a shame too, because they'll miss a lot of fun and adventure.