Becoming a Ham
My name is Sandi, and I’ve been a ham for 41 years. Recently I had the privilege of helping out at the RACES antenna installation at the Schoharie Emergency Management Office on Rt. 7 in Cobleskill. It brings back a lot of memories. It’s wonderful to work with such a great group of hams that are so inviting to people from all walks of life and all stages of learning.
Memories of ham radio dominate my childhood. I came from a family of hams: Dad WW2T (formerly KA2DYB), Mom KA2ESQ, my sister Clara, a silent key (KA2DYC), my sister Tina (KA2DYD), and me N2FPX (formerly KA2ICP). Some of my earliest recollections were of Dad studying advanced electronics theory for General Electric. Dad invited all of us to start taking ham radio classes together as a family in 1978. He began bringing home projects for us to build together – a crystal radio set, a tube radio, then HeathKits, a dummy load, an iambic programable keyer, stereo and speakers, and finally an antenna farm… Good times, good times! That’s when mom knew we were “all in.”
In the 1970’s they still used tubes in radios. It was before the solid state analog age. Dad would bring home a card fed into a computer that read binary code, and fascinate us with stories of how they were coming out with computers. Of course we wanted one, but he would shake his head and laugh, saying “computers take up an entire room!” So it was settled. We just didn’t have the space. But our little ham clan began to learn fascinating things about radio waves, components, tubes, and electronics. The first time I ever replaced a tube in a radio, it was so easy and gave me such a feeling of satisfaction that I determined then and there, that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up – run a little store where I sell and replace radio tubes. I was maybe 7 years old at the time. I also wanted to sing Scat like Ella Fitzgerald. Needless to say, those dreams didn’t pan out - but it still makes me smile every time I think of it.
Our family began attending night classes for Amateur Radio when I was 8 (in 1978) at Niskayuna High School. I remember the first night of classes. The instructor was very surprised to have a family attending and asked everyone to stand up, introduce themselves, and tell the class why they were there. Dad went first, talking at length about how Amateur Radio opens up the world to the average person. They asked me, and I said something about each of the projects we had worked on, and how I thought it was really interesting and I wanted to become a ham. Then my big sisters stood up and ruined it. They told the class, “my dad made me come here tonight.” I was so embarrassed for Dad. He was so excited for all of us to be there, and I was so excited that I was going to be a ham.
I was in 3rd grade. I read a lot, even as a kid. I think I’ve always found almost every subject to be fascinating. I was filled with wonder. I had a collection of postcards and QSL cards from all around the world. School was great; friends, story books, milk and cookies, and the big parachute in gym class – but the first thing we were required to do when we got off the bus was to copy morse code at 5 wpm on W1AW every day. As soon as dinner was over and my homework was done, I could be found sitting in the kitchen with Dad, learning the basics of logarithms (which I called log rhythms), how to read an oscilloscope, and then eventually reading schematics, soldering resistors, using a multi-meter, and practicing on dad’s new Texas Instruments scientific calculator. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all fun. The big kids seemed to pick it up much faster, so for me it was straight memorization back then. At 8 years old it kind of felt like ‘being the dumb kid in the smart-kid class.’ Dad, Clara, and Tina all passed their test the first year, 1978. Mom studied her morse code, got her speed up and passed her novice exam the next year, 1979. Unlike my mom I really struggled with the theory, but I could send and copy code. About 6 months after I turned 10, I finally passed my novice exam in 1980. I had to face crushing failure a couple of times, but thankfully I kept going and the journey became a great adventure.
The next several years were a blur of activity, including day trips to Hamfests, local conventions, small group meetings like the Schenectady Wireless Association, and 20 meter club banquets. If we were driving somewhere, we were the car with the whip antenna affixed to the roof by a magnet. When me and my sisters went on bike rides, we carried our 2-meter rigs in case someone got hurt and we had to do a phone patch to call for help. I also brought mine to school and talked with my class about line-of-sight versus bouncing a signal off a repeater. Local hams in the Capital region and outlying areas became like our extended family and we shared both on-air fun and the occasional poolside barbecue and chew-the-fat get togethers. There was always someone coming or going in our house. One week it might be someone visiting from Australia, and then next month it was someone from Germany, or Trinidad, or Argentina. That was normal for me. We also made friends with Dr. Max DeHenseler, a cartographer for the UN in Manhattan and a ham radio operator, who let us work 4U1UN. We visited Max and Renata about 4 times a year until he was assigned as a liaison to Switzerland and then France. I caught up with them in Switzerland, but since then, their telegraph key has also gone silent. He was a great man, larger than life, and she was sweet, sophisticated, and like a favorite aunt to me.
Nobody had a lot of money back then so we made our own QSL cards. My sister Clara was really into designing them. Dad had a panda bear sitting on a ham radio, Tina’s was a bird, representing our Native American culture. Mine had a raccoon… I don’t know why. I didn’t particularly like them more than any other woodland creature – but that’s what she drew, so that’s what it was.
Whenever we went to the field day nearby, we met friends we had come to know over the years. Us kids all ran around and played tag, while the adults sat in their campers, smoking, drinking beer, and tuning up their rigs for the contest Saturday to Sunday.
Every tent was filled with the buzz of, “CQ contest, CQ contest, CQ contest. This is K2AE, King-Two-American-Eagle calling CQ contest…” I would fall asleep to the sound of that, and it’s one of my fondest memories. Sometimes they would let me climb the antenna for the view. It was pretty scary. The antenna, a 6-element beam, was 100 feet tall but ours in the backyard was only 50 feet and that one suited me much better. My knees didn’t knock together so much 50 feet up. I tried to send code at the speed I copied (hi hi). At that time I was sending at 10 wpm, but copying a solid 5 wpm. Dad helped copy the first year, He was a solid copy at 20 wpm for as long as I can remember. I logged in my little kid scrawl, but that was one of my favorite things – still is. That year, the summer of 1980, the TV news crew came down to field day. I was logging in a tent and copying code while my partner made SSB contacts. All of a sudden I heard the news person say something to the effect of: my name, I was a ham, and that I was the 3rd youngest ham in the country. Wow. I had no idea. Then I learned there was a 4 year-old boy and a 6 year-old boy who were also hams somewhere in the US at that time. It had never occurred to me. I would go play with my friends Friday night during set up – the kids of other hams - and then the kids would all disappear by Saturday when the contest started, field day started, and we got to work. I think I just thought lots of kids were hams.
We were very active in ham radio, and our family traveled around and bumped into other hams everywhere we went. Dad would see an antenna on a car, or a ham radio license plate and he loved to beep the first half of “shave and a haircut” to them, followed by their response on the car horn, “two bits.” That’s how we signed off in morse code back then. I don’t know if they still do that, but it was all the little things that made ham radio so much fun – the social events, picking through old cardboard boxes of radio parts looking for treasures at the NYS Fairgrounds, 2-meter relays for the Lake Placid Olympics, my mom even took me to Las Vegas for a YLRL ladies convention in 1985. I didn’t have much to say when they called on me to stand up and tell them about myself - but I had just learned the hula, so I performed the huki-lau in front of 300 YL’s and XYL’s to their surprise and delight. Does the hula have anything to do with ham radio? Not really. But we really connected back then. There was no internet, no microwave ovens, no A/C or FM radio in cars - although seatbelts and motorcycle helmets were coming into wide use. It was a simpler time. My childhood was comprised of school, ham radio, and growing up as a kid in the country. When I wasn’t staying up until 12 or 1am to be able to talk to Saudi Arabia, I was hanging barefoot and upside down from a tree, watching meteor showers, or skimming stones on the old horse pond across the street.
Now, life has become very busy, but I always try to make time for RACES / SCARA / ARES emergency drills whenever I hear about them. As an adult, I know that even with all the modern technology – when disasters hit close to home, Amateur Radio will be there – a reliable form of emergency communications used to save lives, communicate with disaster crews, help search and rescue, and connect the responders with emergency shelters and hospitals. Sometimes, Ham Radio is the ONLY form of communication possible in a disaster, such as the Superstorm damage from Irene and Lee that devastated my beautiful Schoharie County in 2011. Cell phones were down, and the county relied on ham radio for all its communications.
We know why we do it. Emergency Communications are vital. But, at the same time, there’s no FCC rule against thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Ham Radio is open, inclusive, and non-discriminatory. I was a 7 year-old little girl in pigtails when I started learning about radios and electronics. Now, a wife, mother of 4 daughters, and “Nanny” to my 6 grandchildren… I’m rusty - for sure – but my beloved Ham Radio still has a place for me… and for you. Men, women, young, old, all races and languages – doesn’t matter. I’m calling all those interested in Ham Radio. Come and be a part of something vibrant, fun, and important. See you on the air!
73’s & 88’s
September 2, 2021