I become a Ham

At 71 years old I have taken up the hobby of HAM radio!  A while ago I was called to the position of Assistant Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for our ward with the specific responsibility of communications.  I was given a dozen handy-talkie radios and told to distribute them to our districts and to train people on how to use them. The radios have a wide range of capabilities including public service channels, emergency channels, and Ham Radio channels.  I decided that if I was to be training on these radios I needed to have a Ham license, even though those in our districts without a license would not be using those frequencies.

I learned that the local amateur radio club was having training on getting the license so I joined the club and started attending.  The training was really boring and after just one session I decided to study on my own.  There are several websites available with practice tests which have the exact same questions as the FCC exam so I studied that way. I took the basic test and passed and so was able to take the general test the same night and I passed it as well.  I few days later I got my Ham License in the mail.

I bought a 50 watt mobile radio and a hi-gain antenna for the roof and started communicating with club members , mostly on the daily nets.  The Nets are in the 2-Meter band which is in the VHF(very high frequency) range, and is primarily used for point-to-point local communications, though through a system of repeaters you can communicate throughout the intermountain region. The Breakfast Net meets on the Iron Mountain repeater (146.760 MHz) every day but Sunday at 7:00am and the Friendship Net meets daily at 9:00pm on the same repeater.

I got with Don Blanchard, whom I consider the father of Ham Radio in Southern Utah, and who was also my electronics instructor in college back in the 60's, and we worked with the BLM to get a repeater installed on Harmony Mountain which gives us coverage for the entire Harmony Valley and over the mountain to a majority of Iron County.

 

Harmony Mountain Repeater site                                  My new HF radio, an ICOM 7300

I got into HF (High Frequency) communications when I purchased some used gear from Katherine Pons whose husband had been a HAM operator but died a while back.  The HF radio was really old and hard to use but I did make a few contacts across the country.  More recently I purchased a newer radio that is a lot easier to use and have started making more contacts.  My HF antenna is a parallel dipole wire antenna about 60 feet long strung between trees in the back yard.  I would like to find a used antenna tower, somewhere in the 40 foot range so that I can get my antenna up higher in the air and get better signals.

I am not a rebid radio fan but am enjoying the technical aspects of the hobby as well as making contacts far and wide. I think it is a hobby that I can continue to enjoy even when I am too old to do much else.