Episode: 738
Title: HPR0738: Short History of Ham Radio and How I got Involved
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0738/hpr0738.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 01:43:31

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Could you try that one?
BECOME AN AUSODAL
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You suffer from the heartbreak of brain rot, feeling bored, sluggish, listless, not had
a new idea in days, using electronic gizmos but not a clue why they work.
Now there's help, ham radio.
Guaranteed is to emulate your corroding neurons and open a whole new world of excitement
to learn more about ham radio, go to helloradio.org.
Side effects of ham radio usage include mental stimulation, desire for education, new
career paths, understanding of technology, and cases of addiction have been reported.
If you experience any of these symptoms, you're welcome.
Ham radio.
It's not your grandaddy's radio anymore.
Hello and welcome to Hagrid Public Radio.
Your host today is Joel McLaughlin.
I am also known as Gorkin from the Lexling Tech Show and W3RAZ or Whiskey 3 Romeo of
Zulu.
That's how you would say my amateur radio call Infinix and that's what today's show is
going to be about.
The reason why I decided to record this for HPR was the last episode of TLLTS that we
lost.
We had a good conversation going with a Carla Schroeder on amateur radio and then Dan and
I also rehashed as much as we could.
I rehashed what I could on the subject.
Now today I'm going to cover a little bit of the history of amateur radio and then also
going to basically tell you how I got interested in it, what I currently do in it, and then
leave it at that for this episode.
But first I just wanted to say thanks for the guys at HPR for hosting this show while
hosting the feeds here and just thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my
love of amateur radio with the listeners of HPR.
So here we go, amateur radio actually started with the birth of radio, essentially.
In the beginning there was no SCC of course, so there was nobody to manage all that stuff.
So these were basically that time period that was the present day hacker.
There was no computers, there was no electronics like we have today.
So they had to invent this stuff and inventors of people who worked on radio over the years
come from the likes of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, Nicola Tessa, Gulea M. O. Marconi, Amos Dolbea,
Reginald Fessenden, James Clark Maxwell, Sir Oliver Lodge, Malalumus, Nathan Stubbelfield,
Alexander Popoff, and many others.
Quartet course also the inventors of the transistor had a huge role in how amateur radio is looking
today.
Now, Marconi had experiments from 1900 through 1908 and they were sending something they
call continuous wave today or CW otherwise known as Morse code.
And they used what was called a spark gap transmitter.
Now these were not the boxes like we used today at all, they looked a little bit more
let's say brutal.
They looked like torture devices to me every time I've ever seen a spark gap transmitter
that's kind of what it looked like to me because essentially it's as if spark was actually
jumping from one post to another anyway so that's how you know the radio first came about
is they had these, they had laden jars, a tuning coil, a spark gap, and an induction coils
of course telegraph key and batteries, alright.
And this very simple transmitter and you know there's not much control of what frequency
you came on in the beginning you know nothing like we have today with a computer generated
displays or any of that stuff.
So this is like I said very early in amateur radio.
That's how it started and then it wasn't until 1912 that the US federal government decided
that it was time to start licensing amateur radio operators which means in 2012 we will
be celebrating the 100th year of amateur radio.
Now throughout the years they actually suspended amateur radio twice.
One was at least twice to my knowledge.
One was during World War I and the other was during World War II which my grandfather served
in.
Now World War II my grandfather served as a radio officer in the army in Germany actually.
That's basically where anyone who was an amateur radio operator they essentially went into
the army.
A lot of them did anyway.
So at least all the people that my grandfather hung out with they also served as radio officers
in the army.
So it wasn't until after the war and the booms of the you know the fifties and the into
the sixties where amateur radio really started to blossom.
So 1961 was the first satellite carrying amateur radio Oscar one was launched in 1961.
Ham radio also served the US Navy and other Department of Defense agencies and they would
help send messages back home with the radio.
And that actually kind of goes hand in hand with amateur radio today.
We still serve the public interest in amateur radio usually can go in to areas and set up
stations where there is very little.
We set up a radio and antenna and a generator for power or batteries or whatever.
We start communicating places like Joplin, Missouri, Hurricane Katrina, Tuscaloose, Alabama.
Some of these places had no communications.
So I'm betting that the amateur radio operators were very very active in those areas today
even.
So and that's one of the reasons why amateur radio is important and it's important that
we get operators and that we stay at the forefront of technology.
Because amateur radio operators always were there.
They had to back in the day there wasn't a place to go buy radios.
You had to build your own.
You had to go and buy a kit from Heath kit or other places like that and build your own
radio.
Nowadays it's just easy to go up to gigaparts.com and order a radio and even order a antenna
and feed line and everything and just put everything together and back then you really had
to know your stuff.
You had to build your own antennas and that's one of the things I'm hoping to accomplish
with HDR is to bring some of that to the hacker community of today.
Just kind of say what happens if the internet goes away?
How do you communicate without Skype and things of that nature and cell phones and whatnot?
Well this is how amateur radio is the way to get message out of a disaster.
So how did I get interested in the amateur radio?
My grandfather as I said he served in the World War II as a communications officer and
he was originally given the call sign W-8-R-A-Z and then at some point where he was issued
that license which was Western Pennsylvania that license changed from 8 to 3 because they
did some redistricting of the call areas now.
What do I mean by a call area?
Well basically the FCC has a map and depending on where you live depends on what number is
going to be in your call.
Now when I was first licensed my call was originally N-8-V-Q-J or November 8 Victor Quebec
Juliet in international phonetics and you will hear amateur radio's operators use phonetics
often because sometimes we're communicating in deteriorating conditions and it's not
an FM signal.
Sideband can sound kind of bizarre if you've never heard it before and hopefully I might
actually have a little bit of a show on each kind of signal that we can produce of course
then you have Morse code which that is Morse code is essentially a digital mode.
It's on and off kind of you either have a signal or you don't.
That's where digital binary stuff first came from Morse code when you really think about
it.
So my grandfather was originally W-8-R-A-Z until the redistricting N-E was W-3-R-A-Z.
Now in a lot of areas all the different variations on the call signs have been issued and they're
starting to recycle them.
The original call signs used to be like one by two's like I have a friend who's got a
call N-8-X-E so those are starting to be reissued because well the people who used to hold
them are dying.
So they have to give new people call signs from somewhere so that's what happens.
So when I pass on if my son doesn't get my like my call current call sign W-3-R-A-Z somebody
else will.
So now my hope is that somebody else gets it because W-3-R-A-Z has always been in my
family since my grandfather.
That's one of the reasons why I switched my call sign.
Back in 2003 I felt like I went to the effort to learn Morse code and take the test and
I passed my 13 words per minute Morse code test.
Now unfortunately I probably can't send that anymore.
Send or receive that anymore.
But that's just the way it was back then back in 2003 I had to do that.
Now three years later they got rid of the requirement so oh well that's just the way
it happens but so it was at that time when I upgraded my license I was kind of funny.
I had already told my my friend Carl Diver A-A-A-Y-Y or Alpha Alpha 8 Yankee Yankee.
I told him that I was going to go ahead and change my call once if I passed my exam and
that year I decided I was going to take my exam at the date and hamvention in 2003 and
the great thing with the way ham exams are now is that you'll walk out knowing and able
to use your new privileges that you just earn that's the way it works.
I walked in and passed my exams.
When I came out he asked me how I did and I said I passed and he handed me a name tag
with my new call on it already.
Now I had to turn in paperwork to the FCC to get that because it was actually available
and fortunately enough for me nobody else wanted it so I was able to pick it up and
unfortunately I didn't have to go and destroy that tag.
That's kind of how I got my call sign upgraded and why did I get into it was obviously
using my grandfather.
My grandfather was a big influence in my life I was hung out with him and we talked on
the radio when we were kids with his friends and we you know to me it was just fascinating
to sit there and watch him talk in the radio and he be heard thousands of miles away and
so that's kind of what inspired me to go get my license and my grandfather always knew
that if if anyone was going to do it would have been Joel so that's also where I got
my love for computers and all the rest of stuff that makes me what I am today so amateur
radio is a lot of what makes me up or what makes me up.
What modes do I work now?
I primarily do a FM I use a have a handheld radio I use a Yezu VX7R which is a that's
what they call a tri-bander handheld radio it has 6 meters 70 centimeters 2 meters
and it doesn't do to 20 but does receive like broadcast band and stuff like that plus
I can receive all the way up to the you know other bands too I think you can receive
some of the HF bands on there as well and so that's my handheld radio I use I also have
a radio that I inherited from my grandfather made by a company called Asden asden doesn't
make amateur radios anymore but they do make microphones and PA equipment still so they're
still around and that radio is a asden PCS 6000 and that's 2 meter only it's got a keypad
on a microphone for using a DTMF tones or DTMF is basically if you know what your phone
like your cell phone if you ever hear the tones that come from that that's what they
call a DTMF tone and I'll talk a little bit more about that maybe in a later HPR but so
and that's my two primary radios I also have an HTX 10 I believe it is it's a 10 meter
only radio that I picked up from radio shack for 50 bucks you're not going to get that
lucky twice most radios that I've seen you might have seen you know they couldn't cost
anywhere between 500 to thousands of dollars for the radios you can still actually build
your own radio today it's a little harder maybe than it used to be and it's in some
cases easier because back in you had to have things like an oscilloscope and stuff like
that but in a lot of cases nowadays you don't even have to have a oscilloscope you can
just use it a what they call a VOM or volt oh meter to do the necessary measurements when
you're putting the radio together now I actually have not put any of these together myself
yet maybe someday I might buy one and just learn how to do it but there's all kinds of
kits that you can buy still they're just a little harder to find you just can't go to
radio shack and buy parts to build your own radio now like used to be able to but it's
still possible to build your own radio there's also other things like software to find
radios which you know I've never used myself but I know they exist and that's part of what you
have to learn when you you know you may not have to learn about software software yes necessarily
for your test but you have to learn certain things about what amateur radios do operators do the
law a little bit you know and so for example when part of the law is you're not supposed to use
any more power than is necessary to establish communications that is you don't go around full
legal limit all the time just because you can you use only what you need to establish communications
now there's some amateurs that go into that a little bit deeper and run as little as they can
and those operators are called what they call QRP operators QRP is a cute code for low power
mostly these operators probably run five watts or less and you can work the world with a radio
that only produces five watts you don't need hundreds and thousands of watts to establish
communications on a worldwide basis but that's what some people think they're supposed to do but
that's really the antithesis of amateur radios so that's really all I'm going to have in this
episode because I want to pick some certain topics out specifically and record some shows other
shows about it like one of the things I want to look at is radio programming for many years
since like the late 90s at least I think you've been able to hook your radio up to a computer
in a program them that way you don't have to sit there and type into a little tiny keypad
to program all the frequencies that you might want to use so I'll cover a little bit on that and
not necessarily on how to do it with the out-of-the-box stuff but how to do the more hackery kind of
things how to do that in Linux for example so those are the kind of topics I hope to get in here
on hacker public radio I hope you find this topic interesting if you want to if you want to email
me suggestions feel free to email me gorken at tllts.org is one address you can use or you can
also use my gmail address which is the same go or gorken g.o.rk.o and at gmail.com and thank you
guys for listening to this I hope you like I said hope you find it informative and I hope it
really interests you in amateur radio and that will also be I keep thinking of topics as I'm
talking here so I'm gonna go ahead and stop recording here um but like I said hope you find it
interesting and stay tuned to have hacker public radio hopefully I can get some more more of you
interested into a amateur radio now if you're going before I leave if you're going to the
southeast Linux Fest one thing I am definitely going to do is I'm going to take my amateur radio
with me if I can get a show out well I don't know if this was going to run before self because
it's only in a couple weeks here but um if you're out there in you're in in the Spartanburg area
I highly suggest looking up Jeremy Jeremy Sands who's one of the organizers of the southeast
Linux Fest he has a nice set of frequencies that you can use with the amateur radio
to communicate in that area so if your amateur radio operator and you would like to talk to me
w3 r a z just give me a call I'll probably listen to one probably the very first frequency in
Jeremy's list for a little bit of time every day so I might even try and establish a net maybe
I don't know self-flat I don't know we'll see the thing is I want to also be there in
in service of the Linux like tech show so I'll be at the tech show booth and I may take the
radio with me right at the booth so you can take a look at it if you've never seen an amateur
you can take a look at my radio and we can chat about amateur radio so
one thing that I'll share with you as I close the show and it seems like I've been closing
for five minutes is there's a set of codes that you will hear operators use now a lot of
the operators use them in voice modes but a lot of you don't really have to but I usually do
at the end of my own personal podcast I'll use the term 73 instead of 33 means best regards so
I always share one of 73's have a happy summer hopefully I can see you at the southeast Linux
fest in Spartanburg South Carolina and give me a call call signs W3RA's in 73's and I'm clear
with over 220 people dead at a path of destruction hundreds of miles long survivors of the Alabama
tornadoes found themselves in whole cities without power telephones internet cell phones or other
ways to communicate and who is there to help in this devastation the amateur radio operators
ham radio people are providing communications between shelters relief centers emergency operation
centers search and rescue groups at a host of relief organizations as they respond to the crisis
in the days to come more hands will arrive from around the country to be assigned where they're
needed most these unpaid volunteers are using their radio skills to get critical voice and
digital messages through when other systems go down or overwhelmed ham radio people using
modern equipment still are reliable like they always have been to learn more about amateur radio
in emergencies go to emergency radio dot org
thank you for listening to hacker public radio for more information on the show and how to
contribute your own shows visit hacker public radio dot org
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