2006-01-19
Ham Radio
I am an admitted nerd. I make no bones about it. As this has been a documented fact, most of this entry should not come as shock to you.
I was looking for a specific book the other day in my library when I came across an old book of mine. It was a Radio Shack manual on learning everything that you needed to know to get your ham radio license. It came with all the questions that would be on the FCC test and it had a little tape that you could play that would help you learn Morse Code, as at that time you had to be able to send and receive Morse Code to obtain your license.
Seeing that book again reminded me of why I was so anxious to get my Ham Radio license. When I was in the Boy Scouts, we were at summer camp when one of the Dad’s started stringing a long wire between two of the most gigantic oak trees I had ever seen. He did not tell anyone what he was doing, he just started doing it and slowly drew a crowd of attention. He finally hooked the wire up to a two way radio and started dialing in frequencies. We were located in the middle of no-where Missouri and during about a three-day period; we talked to people all over the U.S., Canada, Europe and as far away as Hungry (behind the Iron Curtain). I thought it was the most amazing thing that I had ever seen. You could actually, instantly communicate with people all over the world! What an amazing thing!
Just to give you some perspective, this would have been about 1988 and I would have been about 14 or 15 years old. What struck me the other day is just how much the world has changed in those 17 years. In 1988, Al Gore would not invent the Internet for a few more years. There still was something called the Soviet Union and Tom Clancy books talking about nuclear war seemed a little too real back then.
Today, I have a Blackberry, so virtually anywhere I am, I can send and receive email, make a phone call, or surf live on the Internet. My children will never know a time when these three things could not be done at my whim. For them it will be as normal as color television was to me growing up. So if I want to communicate with someone anywhere in the world or post a diaryland entry that anyone in the world can read, I can do it sitting the park watching the kids play or from an airport, or very likely even from the middle of no-where Missouri (though maybe for an extra cost and slightly slower data feeds). I wouldn’t even have to string a wire between two huge oak trees.
The idea that my kids will never remember a time when that was not possible just blew me away.
I never did get my Ham Radio license. I just sucked at Morse code and could never get the 10 words per minute or whatever the minimum was. I tried off and on for about a year, but eventually lost interest. I guess with a Blackberry, I don’t need to go back and get it, though I did read somewhere that there is a new license that does not the Code.
-- rockabillie at 5:01 p.m.