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Pathway to a life dream
2013-09-24 03:04 |
Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 1 |
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Hello everyone, my name is David AB9PM from Wisconsin in the USA. I am an everyday working guy now 54 years old and from my childhood I have been totally fascinated with radio. As a young child with my pocket transistor radio, I noticed I could pick up stations all over my state, and at night I could hear stations across the nation, Canada, and the Caribbean. Wow really cool. As a child I learned my voice could travel the world by radio when I would visit my Uncle Oliver WB9BOT. He was Oliver the "manure" spreader! Unfortunately Uncle Oliver went silent key too early in my life, and I could have used more time with him to "play" radios.
During my teenage years I experimented with 11 meters. Citizens Band was not a total positive experience, as there was too much in fighting and not enough spectrum with 23 channels. I met another elmer Lee Bradke who had a lot of amateur equipment, and he would always encourage me to follow Amateur radio. When I was spreading TVI across the world on 11 meters, Lee who was an electrical engineer, taught me how RF travels not only from your antenna, but can back up through your power supply and extend backwards through your electrical power lines. Lee gave me some ARRL handbooks that I kept and treasured for years reading and reading them again and again. I had an opportunity to take a local ham class for the novice license, but I the entrance fee was $5 and my family was poor so my parents couldn't afford it and I couldn't participate. When I started my young adult life I started working in the paper industry and started making some money and I bought my first shortwave receiver, a model from Radio Shack. The world was mine to hear monitoring world shortwave broadcasters and of course the Amateur radio spectrum, dreaming of that 100 foot antenna I wanted in the backyard. I lived in an apartment and I bought 4 planter poles. A planter pole would stand between the floor and ceiling and hold plants off the pole for decoration. My planter poles positioned in each corner of a spare bedroom of a second story apartment and I had wire strung around the whole room from pole to pole to act as an antenna for my radio. I was in heaven, but my xyl said I loved my radio more than her! As I went through life working most of the time I would spend those precious few nights listening to the Amateur bands, and I loved the groups on 75/80 meters, and I got to know each of the operators by voice, name, and call. I would laugh with them, even though I wasn't really part of their world. My favorite frequencies were 3.849.5 Mhz, 3.898 Mhz, and 3.913 Mhz. I needed a notch filter though, the tune ups were murder! So I bought one. I tried to learn cw, but with so little time off from work, it just didn't work out. I lost my job in the paper industry and could only get a new job paying at 45% of what my original pay. I was stuck living in an antenna restricted area. My new job gave me more time off from work, and my only obstacle to a license, the cw was removed. So I studied for 25 hours and took all 3 exams in one sitting. I got one wrong on the general exam, and passed the tech and extra test with no errors. When I finished the extra exam, I knew I had just completed a life dream. The volunteer examiners were rather upset about me passing all 3 exams at once, and didn't want to talk with me anymore. One of the examiner's told me it took him 9 years to get his extra class license. I did it all in under 30 minutes, but I spent 30 years as a swl waiting on the side, which they didn't understand. I started to participate in e-ham.net and found myself met with "old grumpy" men, who would call me a half amateur, because I was a no code ham, and I certainly didn't deserve to be called an extra class license holder. Well I was already offended from the exam session, and now I was really offended by eham.net participants. I bought my rig and my mobile antennas and started working mobile DX. I loved it, and all the foreigners I contacted were so polite. Living in Wisconsin, however makes DX mobile a summer, 5 month a year hobby only, way too cold, too much snow the rest of the year. I gave CQ 100 a try, the few contacts I had were very good, I checked out Hamsphere, but I didn't find anyone. I was invited back in an e-mail and I was pleasantly surprised to find the whole world of participants at this time. I think Hamsphere is an excellent opportunity for anyone to learn the right way to use Amateur radio. Yes you will ALWAYS have the negative side from those who say it isn't real radio. Of course not, it was never meant to be, but for people who have antenna restrictions, get older, get sick, Hamsphere is great! Hamsphere will need the Adminstrators to watch over the system to keep it from becoming a mess. With a dedicated group of individuals to set an example and work with people joining the system to use Hamsphere the right way, this system could be the greatest option for anyone to learn and use the net version of Amateur radio. |
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