As I prepared to talk over a ham radio transceiver for the first time last week, I felt overwhelmed and intimidated.
Here I sat in a small basement room at Derby City Hall, holding my key to communicate with people all over the world — and even those on the space station, I was told.
I was about to put myself out there into the radio waves, and hope someone wanted to talk to me.
It was Veterans Day, and I had come to an open house at Derby’s Office of Emergency Management. The office had invited Valley veterans to communicate on the office’s ham radio. While the crew waited for veterans to arrive, they let reporter me try out the communication system for the first time.
I was driving blind.
It felt remarkably close to the first time I used Twitter, in 2008.
I had thought: Will anyone care what I have to say? Will I care what anyone else has to say?
At the time, you could click on a tab that said “everyone” and see a stream of all messages from all over the world in one place. The sheer number and randomness to the conversations was impressive, if not a little confusing.
I pictured ham radio much the same — constant streams of messages, crossing each other’s paths, somehow making sense at the receiving end. A web to easily become tangled in if you don’t know how to navigate the channels.
Amatuer radio enthusiasts have been mastering that art for decades.
What is Ham Radio?
Vin Vizzo, director of emergency management, and volunteer Joel Lambert showed me the ropes.
They couldn’t explain why it’s called “ham” radio. (“No one knows,” Lambert said.). But they had lots of information about the practice itself.
Using radio waves, antennas and transceivers, hams communicate without the internet, without satellites, without cables. For a helpful introduction to the technical aspects of ham radio, view this slideshow from the National Association for Amateur Radio.
Older ham radios used Morse code to communicate. Modern equipment can transmit voice, picture and video — independent of the internet or wires.
The radio can be used in the case of emergencies, if other means of communication fail.
But in the mean time, hams practice their hobby in several different ways. They have contests — such as who can contact people in all 50 states. They host conventions. They tune in during rush hour traffic for a round-robin discussion.
And they talk.
My First Conversation
Thursday, the topic at Derby City Hall was Veterans.
The staff at Derby’s Office of Emergency Management had hoped veterans would come to the office and use their ham radio to communicate with people at military bases — swap war stories over the radio.
They got me instead.
So Lambert set me up at the ham radio transceiver and tried to find someone for me to talk with. (See the video at top.)
We came upon Mike Mardis in Stratford. He happened to be a Gulf War veteran, spending a much-deserved day off by his radio.
We talked briefly about his location, his service and ham radio rules.
Then I signed off as Lambert instructed — saying “73,” which in ham radio lingo means “Best regards.”
The conversation was a success.
Of course it was, I realized several minutes later, as I left City Hall.
Mardis was on the airwaves looking to talk. So was everyone else using ham radio that day, or any other day.
We can try to fool ourselves by putting down ham radio, or Twitter for that matter. But let’s face it: Humans are a species meant to communicate. We crave the interaction, the reinforcement of our self worth, the stories.
We all love to gab, whether it’s over the radio waves or in 140-character bits.
