The Old Days
-or How We Used to Get Wiredby Mark Samis, KD2XS, msamis@ric.lhric.org OK all you young techno-dweebs. This is how we used to get wired. Oh, you say, another old baby-boomer espousing the "good old days." You got it and these were our "good old days." This story is about surfing the Net- allbeit a different Net. The Net of the radio spectrum. We were not phone freakers. We were navigators of the ether. We found much of the same feelings of discovery, exploration and satisfaction that you now are experiencing in your unearthing of "cool" sites on the Web . There was a gang of us- a gang of four to be exact, who in the mid sixties, started to find out through the ether- that there was a world out there. This early teen group's major occupation initially was building model rockets out of cigar tubes. Remember- this was the era of the Great Space Race. I even had a cardboard mock-up of a Mercury capsule in my room. One day, the supply of firecracker fuses we used for our cigar tube rockets had dwindled to nothing, so we got out the chemistry set and made a fuse on the ground with magnesium powder. We placed a good-sized pile at the base of the cigar tube packed tightly with a zinc and sulfur mixture. Not realizing, of course that magnesium burns much, much faster than any fuse-like substance, we lit the end of the powder line. There was no wait and suddenly "BOOM"- a blinding flash and within minutes we were crying inside the house. Mom was pulling bits of aluminum shrapnel from our hair, clothes and skin, saying something like "I told you so." We needed a change of venue and the gang got that change when Billy said "Have you guys tried listening to the radio really late at night and tuning in those really weak stations between the big ones?" Well, being in New York in the era of the "transistor radio", which came well before the "Walkman" (listen carefully my little Techno-dweeb), we were used to tuning into stations such as WNBC for sports, WABC for rock, or WCBS for news. We all used to stick the radio under the pillow at night and use the earphone that you stick in one ear (no headphones, dweebs) to listen to the Knicks or the Rangers late at night when they were on the West Coast. Yes, and it was AM radio , my dweebs and dweebettes, that long forgotten band that you turn to now only to news, sports, highway construction reports, and what's happening at DisneyWorld. But AM radio in the early and mid-sixty's was BIG. FM was small and weird, but getting known. AM, however, because of the frequency of the wave, could "skip" as they called it at night. The ionospheric layers of the atmosphere would settle in just right in the late evening hours to allow even low-power AM stations to hit the layers and bounce down to the earth, sometimes two, three or four times. So when Billy told us he was listening to stations in Chicago, Miami, Tulsa, Montreal or Seattle, we were amazed and started moving our tuning dials between the WABC's, NBC's or WOR's. And sure enough, with cheap, $4.00 transistor radios, we could pick up stations all over North America. With digital tuning and automatic frequency locking in most radios today, you dweebs would be hard-pressed to recreate this environment. You'd have to go pick up some old AM gear in the nearest thrift shop. We found out that this type of AM-surfing was called "Dxing." DX standing for "Distant Station." Each of us started to record or "log" our stations for comparison and bragging rights. Someone said that if you send a postcard to the station, stating that you had heard such and such a program at such and such a time, they would send you a nice, glossy post-card back confirming that you had heard that station at your location. We all started collecting these cards- commonly called QSL cards, posting them on our walls or in albums. One day, Billy called each of us saying, "I got a new radio. You guys have to come over." We rushed over to find that the radio he got was far from "new." But it certainly was different. It was BIG. I mean really big, with big tubes- (yes tubes , my dweebs), big dials, big knobs. It said "Grundig" on it and it had nothing in common with the transistor radios we knew. It turned out Billy got it from his Grandmother, who was sick and had to go into a nursing home. The dials said things like SW1, SW2, SW3. No, these are not rap groups. Billy explained that there were bands other than just AM and FM. "SW stands for Short Wave <href>," he said , "and people all over the world listen to it." We flipped the band switch to SW1 and tuned along the whole band. We heard nothing but static. We did the same for SW2 and SW3 with the same results. "What's up?" asked Billy. Suddenly we remembered the TV. "Maybe you need an antenna- a rabbit ears." We grabbed the rabbit ears off the TV in Billy's living room, praying that we would get it back before his dad came home. Two small screws in the back of the Grundig said "Antenna", so we made the connection and tried again. This time SW2 was alive with activity.- the BBC, the Voice of America, the CBC, Radio Moscow and it was all in English. It was great and before you could blink an eye, each of us hand spent our last penny on a shortwave radio. We bought cheap radios from Sears or Montgomery Ward, but they worked. We saw in Radio magazines big ads for from companies like Hallicrafters, Drake, Hammerlund and Collins. These, however, were not radios- they were RECEIVERS . We could only dream. Meanwhile we found out about a book called the World Radio and TV Handbook, which listed every radio and TV station in the world, their times of operation and their frequencies. Soon we found that certain stations could only be heard at certain times, usually late at night. So about a months worth of sleep was cumulatively lost within two weeks by the gang. But we had QSL cards<href> from Radio Japan, Radio Korea, Radio Moscow and esoteric ones like Vatican Radio or Radio Luxembourg. One thing we realized was that we needed a good antenna. The longer and bigger it was, the better the reception. Rabbit ears now just didn't cut it. Billy lived in a 6-story apartment building on the second floor. He decided to run a copper wire all around the roof and then drop it straight down to his window and into the back of his radio. It was incredible! You could hear the whole bloody universe! We all started running wires into the trees- anywhere we could string them. Finding wire was no easy task. There was nothing like Radio Shack back in the early 60's. There were electronic stores, but they were far and few between. Undaunted as we were- we found them. We mostly had to take to the subway and travel way downtown to Canal Street to find a store with skeletons of teletype machines or old Army Arc-5 radios piled waist-high. These stores fascinated us. All this stuff seemed like junk, but people would buy it! Little did we know that in less than a year's time we would be back as true scavengers. One day Tony (the rich kid) told us his parents had bought him a Hallicrafters Receiver<href>. In this age of Aquarius, his parents had wanted to make sure that his interests remained scientifically-based rather than chemically or otherwise-based. We all scurried over to his home to find out what a true RECEIVER was like as compared to a radio. And it was truly impressive! It actually said "Receiver" on the front panel and it seemed like it had about 100 knobs and switches. It even had a meter that measured signal strength. It looked like the control panel of a space capsule. We were inordinately jealous. There were many bands, but they were not listed like SW1 or SW2. It said "80 Meters" or "4000 KC." KC meant Kilocycles, now referred to as Kilohertz (Khz ) or Megahertz (Mhz). Tony called us over one night and made us sit and listen to Radio Moscow. By now we were veteran SWLers (Short Wave Listeners) and we were immediately bored by this. "Yeah, so?" We said. "Wait," said Tony, "You'll see." Suddenly the signal from Radio Moscow was obliterated by a universally strong signal that is pinning the signal strength meter to the end of its range. It could be heard through the entire range of the band. Even when we switched to a different band, we could hear the distorted signal. It seemed like speech but it was not discernible. It sounded more like conversation that the monologue of a regular SW station. Tony, who was learning quickly what all the knobs did on his receiver, decided to reduce the "RF Sensitivity." By turning it down to almost zero, he could simulate a distant receiver if it were very close to a transmitting station. We all agreed that this had to be a station that was transmitting a signal very close to Tony's house. But it couldn't be a SW station- we knew that even the closest AM or FM station was miles away. And the conversational nature of the voice made it seem like it was just some guy talking with a transmitter. "Maybe it's a pirate station," said Billy. We had read about these "anarchistic, revolutionary peace" radio stations popping up across the country. "It sounds too much like regular conversation," I said, "Maybe it's CB " But the signal seemed to be coming from a frequency outside of the CB band. Anyway, CB had a legal limit of 5 Watts, which is fairly minuscule, even if it emanates from the next apartment. Some people were known, however, to buy illegal amplifiers which could boost the signal to 20, 50, 100 Watts or higher. As Tony lowered the sensitivity, we started to be able to hear the conversation. After a few more adjustments, we heard "CQ, CQ CQ, CQ Twenty Meters, Calling CQ. From W2BV, Whiskey Two Bravo Victor, W2BV. Kay- someone please." A few seconds later- "Roger OZ9PZ, thank you for the call. The name here is Frank and the location is New York, repeat New York. The weather is cool and windy. We're operating a Collins S1/T1 with a dipole antenna on the roof of an 8 story apartment building. OZ9PZ, W2BV, OVER." Then we couldn't hear a thing. "Turn up the gain, man!" Yelled Bobby, 'Let's see if we can hear the other guy." Tony twisted the Sensitivity knob all the way to the right. Faintly, very faintly we heard in broken English- "W2BV, W2BV, Whiskey Two Bravo Victor, this is OZ9PZ, Oscar Zulu Nine Papa Zulu. Roger, Frank, copy you 5 by 9 plus over here in Norway. My handle is Olaf- Oscar, Lima, Alpha Foxtrot- Olaf. The weather is cold, about minus 10 degrees Celsius with snow and ice, but we are used to that here. The rig here is a Drake TR4 with a Triband beam turned stateside. W2BV, OZ9PZ, OVER." Before the "Over" was communicated, Tony had quickly turned the sensitivity down. We neither wanted to have our eardrums shattered or melt the audio amplifier tubes in the receiver. "OZ9PZ, this is Whiskey Two Bravo Victor. OK, Olaf on the weather there. I guess we shouldn't complain here in New York." The conversation went on for a few more minutes and then we heard "Frank", W2BV answer a call from another station, G3LTV located in Manchester , England. This guy in Manchester actually called him when he finished with the Norway station. Tony said, "We have to find this guy Frank, W2BV. He must be real close. And it's not CB. No CB can reach across the ocean." "Yeah, but how do we find him?" I asked. "There's got to be a book or something- just like the World Radio TV Handbook." This led to our next sojourn to one of the regular electronic scavenger shops downtown. There was one shop where the owner was always pleasant and answered our questions. In most other places, they would see that you were a kid and ignore you or worse. At this shop we felt comfortable. We told the owner, Gus, about our experiences. "Sure, he said, "These guys are Hams, Amateur Radio Operators . They do it as a hobby, but also provide public service in case of emergencies and some provide contact to our servicemen overseas. Amateur radio operators have been in the forefront of electronic design for not only radios, but all sorts of new equipment. You can look up the call letters in this book." He pulled out a thick book called The Radio Amateur's Callbook . He rifled through the pages and found W2BV. Next to the call letters was a name- Frank B. Janning and an address- 2317 Pelsar St.- two doors down from Tony's building. Gus said, "This guy's been around. With a call like that, he's got to have an Extra License." "What's an Extra License.?" "Well, all Hams have to take an FCC exam to become an licensed Amateur Operator. Otherwise, you cannot transmit. There are varying levels of tests. The highest level is Extra. If you have two letters after the number in your call, it means you have passed the Extra Exam. The two letters signify a seniority and respect by other hams. In addition, the Extra Class gives you more privileges." "Like what," I asked. "Well, it gives you more frequencies. More area to use voice and CW." "What's CW?" "It stands for Continuous Wave. CW is Morse Code- the original electronic communications medium. Morse still gets through the worst radio conditions." Morse Code . We had heard about it. We knew they used it on ships. SOS and all that. We found out that to become an Amateur Radio Operator you had to know Morse Code. In fact a good part of the FCC test was demonstrating your ability to send and receive Morse Code. Years later I would ruminate about the similarity between Morse and Binary code. Dots and Dashes vs Zeros and Ones- Morse was really the first Binary code. How well did Charles Babbage know Samuel Morse ? When we talk about code today we are extending Sam Morse's ideas to the ultimate intellectual product? Tony looked up our neighbor Ham in the phone book. We were all there when he called W2BV- Frank Janning. "Mr . Janiing?" (We were contemplating just saying "W2BV?") "Yes, this is he." "My name is Tony and I live in the next building. There are a four of us here who are really interested in Amateur Radio. We are all SWLers." (Maybe saying "SWLers" would make him think we were really knowledgeable about electronics, etc.) "We heard you on our Hallicrafters Receiver and we were trying to figure out who you were. We used the Callbook to find you. I hope you don't mind." There was a pregnant pause, probably intentional. "What model Hallicrafters?" "Excuse me." "What model Hallicrafters Receiver? What's the number on it?" Tony quickly scrambled to read the number under the brand. "110C," he said. "That's a good piece of equipment," said W2BV. "You guys want to come over and check out the shack?" Shack was Ham radio talk for station or the physical equipment at an Amateur's location. We looked at each other and smiled. "Sure," said Tony "We'd love to. Just tell us when and where." "How about right now. You know the building, I'm on the second floor -2C." "Gee, thanks, Mr. Janning. We'll be right over." And thus started a lifelong relationship the four of us had with our first "Ham." A relationship that shaped each of our lives- that made us all "digital" way before it was fashionable. We all eventually became Hams. We were hooked the moment we stepped through Frank's door and entered his "shack." The Hallicrafters was a toy compared to the amount and sophistication of equipment in W2BV's collection. My first reaction was to the lights and dials. There was a myriad of colors around the room and the ambient lighting was low. There were read and green power lights, lights that illuminated meters and lights that shined on frequency dials. It was the closest thing to the NASA control center that I have ever witnessed. As far as we knew, it could have launched a rocket. Frank eloquently described each piece of equipment and exactly what it did, our novice minds soaking in every single word. He demonstrated, calling a Ham in France who was just finishing a conversation with another Ham in Louisiana. The French Ham responded immediately and Frank said, "I have a few potential Hams in my shack right now. I'd like them to say a few words." The next thing I knew I was holding a microphone in my hand and trying to think of something just halfway intelligent to say. "Hi, my name is Mark and the weather here is cool and windy." Oh Jeez- real intelligent, I thought. "Hello Mark from sunny France where it is also a bit cool, but not too windy today. I do think spring is finally in the air. Who are your friends?" The rest of the gang introduced themselves to the French amateur operator. That night we went home floating on air. We now all had a definite direction- a purpose in life and that was to get an FCC Amateur Radio Operator's License. The first level of license was called appropriately Novice and required the applicant to be able to send and receive Morse Code at a speed of 5 words per minute with no more than three errors and to pass a 50 question basic electronic exam with a score of 70 or above. We learned that the Novice exam could be taken at the FCC building downtown or another Ham with a General License or above could administer it at his location. We asked Frank who gladly agreed, but said that he would make sure that the exam rules were strictly adhered to. He felt that if he was to give the test, it was his responsibility that our passage into the Amateur community be correctly done for the benefit of the community and ourselves. So we studied like crazy- especially the Code. We knew we could hit the books on the theory part, but learning Morse takes practice. And practice we did in the weirdest ways. In Mrs. Johnson's English class, we were known to tap our pencils in Morse sending messages across the room- much to the chagrin of Mrs. Johnson. We learned how to talk in Morse- like Pig Latin- and to curse in it: Dit Dit Dah Dit, Dit Dit Dah, Dah Dit Dah Dit, Dah Dit Dah. Anyone who knows Morse- Military or otherwise- knows that combination. Let it be said that the first letter is an "F". But somehow it was OK and fun to do it, over the phone, in class, anywhere. We learned quickly that way. We also found out that many Hams either built there own equipment from parts or put together kits from companies like Heathkit. We learned that it would help in learning the code if you had an "oscillator" which was simply a device that emitted a tone when you hooked up a Morse code Key to it. Heathkit sold a kit for $10.00 that had a real nice brass Morse Key and an oscillator with knobs to control volume and tone. It ran off a nine-volt battery. Heathkit had a store in New York City at that time and sold many types of kits including full Amateur receivers and transmitters. They all had this military green front panel, with a darker green case. You couldn't miss a Heathkit. It just screamed out to everyone--"This was built by my owner." The satisfaction couldn't be greater, unless you built it from scratch, but generally it didn't look or work as well. My first Heathkit was the code oscillator and I built it one evening. It didn't have much inside it- maybe 4 or 5 components plus the speaker and dials (potentiometers, they were called or "pots"). The terminology went over well in the mid to late sixties. It was mostly empty space, but the manuals were excellent and we learned how to solder correctly, so all connections were electronically stable. And it gave us incentive to practice the code with each other- every evening. We read the license manuals and we were finally ready for the test. Frank got the exams in the mail and called us over as a group. We all passed with flying colors, which was no surprise, since we had been living and breathing code for the past two or three months. Now it was time to get ready for the big boys- the real "Hams". It was called a General Class license and it means you can use voice as well as code. But the government wants more from you in return. Not more money, but 15 Words per minute and a longer and more in-depth written test. It was time to get back to the code oscillator, but now, with Novice licenses, we could gain some experience in reading other amateurs code and sending it as well. It was time to get a transmitter. Without a transmitter, you couldn't communicate, it was just one way. So the ultimate technology for interactivity at the time for us was transmitting technology. A HAM magazine appropriately came out about a week after we got our Novice licenses with a schematic for building a "low-cost" forty meter plywood transmitter. Plywood? Well, the base was plywood and connection points were nails in the plywood. We soldered wires and components to the nails and it had one tube. Remember tubes. Oops I forgot- you guys don't know from tubes. Anyway, it was a dual triode- one half of the tube acted as an oscillator and the other half was an rf amplifier. For those of you who remember tubes, I think it was a 6BF9. We each put one together and I don't think it cost us more than $10.00 per unit. I was the first one finished, so the crew was over at my house that fateful night, to see what happened when we fired it up. After attaching the old brass Morse key, I turned it on by plugging in the power cord that was directly attached to the transformer. A near-orgasmic experience that most hobbyists can attest to is watching something that you built actually start to work the first time you turn it on. Many times, they won't work the first time, or to get them to work you have to do some major tweaking. In these cases, the satisfaction is not quite the same. The transmitter was our first major electronic project and it worked immediately. This gave all of us confidence- most likely overconfidence as you will see later. In any case we were ecstatic. We immediately strung wires around our rooms and eventually out the window to get better transmission as well as reception. This presented a number of problems. You can't keep a receiver on while you are transmitting because you run the risk of blowing up your the rf pre-amp and destroying the receiver. However, if you turn off the pre-amp and the rf amplifier on the receiver, you have no problems. Most expensive, high-class amateur receivers have this turn-off built in and is accomplished with a relay which senses when you are transmitting and automatically cuts off power to the rf section. But we had no such high-class receivers, so we had to read the schematic and build a switch into the receiver circuitry. We also had to build another switch which would make the antenna attach to the proper piece of equipment at the right time. You could use two antennas, one for receiving and one for transmitting, but that is not practical. So whenever we switched from transmitting to receiving, we had to turn the receiver rf back on and switch the antenna from transmitter to receiver. These were all common problems that we able to overcome. The one problem we faced that we never really thought about existed in our own homes. It was our television sets and the rest of our families. Color TV's were just coming into our homes, but they weren't well shielded from outside interference. TVI stands for television interference and the whole group of us got it bad from all sides. Every time we hit the Morse key to transmit, it completed the circuit to create a carrier signal that immediately wiped out most TV channels below channel 7. I must inform you dweebs that there was no such thing as cable and everything came from on-air broadcasts. Cable today is a closed system that is well-shielded. Imagine watching your favorite show today and it is constantly being interrupted with long and short bursts of interference that wipe out the picture and the audio. These bursts not only affect the TV's in our homes but every TV in the immediate neighborhood. The first few nights were pure havoc. We decided to operate only after hours- which meant after 11 PM. This is probably why most Hams are used to operating late at night and many of them became midnight programmers. The excitement and satisfaction of contacting other Hams all over the country by Morse Code was incredible. I can vaguely remember that my first contact was with a Ham only 15 miles away in Brooklyn, but it was momentous nonetheless. We all made hundreds of contacts, sometimes with the group of us operating together. Yes, you can have more that two stations in contact on the same frequency. You have to wait your turn to transmit, but there are advantages in numbers. If a distant station can't hear you, he may be able to hear your friend, who can then say, "Please listen for my colleague, WA2GCS." We practiced our code speed for the next stepping stone- The General License. The General License is the most common Ham Radio license and is sought after by most hams so they can use voice as well as CW Morse. But you can't take this test at a fellow Ham's home. You must visit that great brick edifice on Christopher Street in downtown New York. It says FCC on it and to this group of new hams it is the epitome of power. Here is where all FCC First and Second Class license exams are given. You need such a license to operate a radio or TV transmitting station. Here is where operating licenses are issued for new radio and TV stations, where licenses are renewed for stations like WNBC or WCBS. It is the central control of dissemination of information in this country. Wow! So here we are in this antique of a building, putting on 1950's headphones and pounding on old brass keys on old oak school desks. But while we were daunted enough by the premises, we were still able to fulfill our goal of passing the General. We went home sky high, because we knew that now we can operate with voice- as soon as we got a "rig". A "rig" to an amateur operator is unit that can transmit and receive- a transceiver. Most of these are expensive electronic pieces. However, we found out that Heathkit had just marketed a new no-frills model called the HW-100. Like most other Heathkit equipment, this was a kit. But this was also an era when kits cost less than the full product. Today as you know my dweebies, kits have all but disappeared because a full product can be manufactured for the same price or less than putting a kit together. This is the same mentality that has erased the small repair shop from the neighborhood. Why fix something that can be replaced for less money? Anyway the big box arrived at each of our homes and in it were big bags of components- resistors, capacitors, transistors and three tubes. The RF preamp and the final amplifier tubes- 6146's. These babies gave this rig a whopping 120 Watts output power. It also came with a 200 page manual. But the four of us were just oozing with confidence after our continuous successeswith the Morse Code Oscillator and the Plywood Transmitter. We were ready for the BIG TIME. We breezed past the introduction in the manual which said to pace yourself. "Work 3 to 4 hours every night and the project will be done within a week," it said. We each got the kit on a Friday and all of us started work that night, hoping to finish by Sunday morning. Not that it was a competition- but then again it was.. We each wanted to be first to "get on the air." We had all purchased D-104 Microphones- top of the line for Amateur work. So, as we worked continuously through the night and through the night again, we looked forward to that incredible moment when we would turn the completed unit on and it would hum to life. Amazingly, Sunday morning came and no calls were made between us. Unusually quiet. Putting together a transceiver kit is equivalent to or even more compacted than building a television receiver. You just don't do it over the weekend, especially if you are a relative novice at this sort of thing. Four of us attempted and four of us failed. As we each turned on the power, various inoperable states were exhibited. My rig was totally dead, Billy's lights came on, but no audio or other sign of reception, Tony's actually made some faint sounds, but that was it. We learned. We learned to pace ourselves when building complex electronic equipment as it takes much concentration to follow the directions and solder components correctly. The causes of the failures were myriad- cold solder joints, shorted connections- only one rig actually had a bad component. Of course, we all thought that we had put the rigs together perfectly and that Heathkit was to blame for poor component selection. As it turned out, Heathkit found the mistakes for us and charged us each another $40.00 to correct them. For a long time, however, we refused to believe it was us who screwed up. So my dweebs, when you are writing code late at night, take a break, for you can't blame it on Borland or Microsoft when it doesn't work. Once we were on the air (similar to "on-line", dweebs), we spent the next few months seeing how fast we could add up the QSL cards and get a certificate called WAC (Worked All Continents). This, of course, entailed quite a bit of sitting at the transceiver at all hours of the day and night. It also meant having a good antenna- not just a copper wire hanging out the window. Antennas directly relate to the frequency (wavelength.) that you normally operate. It is usually 1/2 or 1/4 wavelength. The antenna, more than any other piece of equipment determines how well your signal gets from your location to any place around the world. If you are really rich, you might have an antenna farm (something like a server farm for you networking addicts). Your farm might consist of an antenna for each frequency band that you utilize and the antennas, some of them looking like large TV antennas- would have motors that could rotate them so they could "beam" signals to any part of the globe. Not surprisingly they were called beam antennas or "beams" for short. My "farm" consisted of a single beam for three bands (tri-band beam) that had a motor that I could control with a box next to my rig and a wire in the attic called a dipole which covered two more bands. This was considered an "average" setup, but it got me WAC in just over a month. Tony was lucky. He lived in a six-story apartment building, so he could put his beam on the roof. Nobody questioned it, because it just looked like a larger TV antenna. But once in a while, you might talk to another amateur who lived on a real farm and had a real antenna farm as well. That could mean he had one antenna for every band and sometimes those antennas were full-wavelength wires- called Rhombics-that would outline a cornfield. It was the equivalent of a web server farm with Sparc 2000 servers and a few T3 lines. You dweebs might also notice the absence of any mention of females. While a predominantly white, middle to upper class, conservative male-dominated activity, there were always the YLs and XYLs. Talk about sexism! YLs were young lady hams, but could also be girlfriends of male amateurs. XYLs stands for ex-young lady or married female amateur. It could also mean the wife of an amateur. YLs or XYLs didn't have such terms for male amateurs.. There was also an "underground" of amateur radio. This underground consisted of hippie/techies who sometimes used their knowledge of radio technology to build "pirate" radio stations. But most voice and CW communication on the Amateur Radio bands was non-political in nature. During the cold war, the government did not look pleasingly at exchanging political ideology (or anything else for that matter) with our enemies. Even with present-day capitalism oozing through East Europe, most chats still are primarily technical in nature- discussing equipment, operating conditions or other contacts. Amateur Radio today is very different from the "good old days". Computers can translate and send Morse Code. They can also control transceivers and antenna positions and log contacts with other amateurs. Much of the computer technology today including LAN protocols were developed by amateur radio operators. Packet Radio is a technology that uses a modem-like box to interface with the computer and allows communication to satellites, the Space Shuttle and the Internet via the air waves. No wires- hear that AT&T ? It's technology was transferred to local area networks in the 70's and it became the building block for the old arcnet and ethernet. Suddenly, just as the Net becomes big, Amateur Radio is facing a resurgence- maybe an offshoot of the technology revolution we are experiencing. Hams are working closely with relief agencies during disasters to provide world-wide mobile communication. Cellular phones still don't work everywhere. They are also providing e-mail connections for remote users and servicemen overseas, just as they did during the Korean , Vietnam and Gulf Wars. If you would like more information on Amateur Radio or Short Wave Listening, here are some sources: |