2 meters and send

One of the things that dad and I did when I was growing up was join a short wave club. It was a civil defense precaution. Amateur Field communication. Dad spent hours at a time listening to a ham radio receiver and sending out messages through it to other "hams." It was fascinating to hear from people all over the world that would bounce their signal off of the space atmosphere and it would land in our basement.

To do this he had to learn morse code. He had to receive it accurately at the rate of 25 words per minute. He also had to be able to send code at close to that speed to get a novice license.

We went to the club meeting at someone's garage in San Bruno every Tuesday night along with 25 other men to listen to code and to build a 2 meter portable rig. The 2 meter would allow for the licensed operator to use your voice.. but the only way you could get a license to run it was to learn the code and pass the test. Some men were there to review the question for the more difficult general operators test. It required more study of electronics and how they could be used without disturbing neighbors with spurious radiation.

In the garage the San Bruno host had set up on the perimeter of his garage a series of listening stations. The code could be listened to by more than one person at at time. I spent many an hour trying to jot down code as it came through the earphones. A couple of wallensack reel to reel recorders were set up to fire the code through the wires. Dad got pretty efficient an actually got his novice license complete with call letters. He set up a station out of old used equipment and he sent out postcards and he received postcards from people that he had met on the air On each of these was an indication of the signal strength. People were not supposed to use the air waves for personal topics, but there were always people talking about all kinds of things that interested them. Sometimes there were more than one person on the other side of the transmission. They would all take turns and give a response. News was often passed along as well as political diatribes. This was the era before CB radios. It took a significant investment of time and money and patience to be a part of this hobby.

In the back of the San Bruno garage was an electronics assembly area with a machine shop and soldering irons and parts. We bought some parts to put together two 2 meter rigs, but unfortunately our interest died before the set was made. Transitors were starting to replace tubes and this also interfered with the pricing and applicablity of making your own two meter send and receive set up.

So now I am here with a computer and doing what many people used to spend hours of preparation doing.. I am broadcasting to the world.. It took just and internet connection and 3 minutes of time to set up a blog. I still cannot do code faster than 12 words a minute.. but that doesn't matter any more... CQ CQ CQ.. dah dee dah dit, dah dah dee dah.

: ) Pat