| It's amateur hours for ham radio operators (July 10) |
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Ray Perkinson, 68, is youthful, to a degree, as far as amateur radio operators go.
Perkinson has only been a “ham” for about three years, though his interest builds on a military career as a radio relay and carrier operator, serving in Korea after the war. A friend got him “back into messing with radios,” he said, and now he’s having plenty of fun, while also providing a public service. Hams can get involved in emergency communication, weather-watching and even city functions like coordinating traffic for bicycle races, he said. “It’s entertaining in a boring world,” Perkinson said, explaining that his new hobby gives the self-described introvert a chance to reach out to people in other states and hear what they have to say. Now Perkinson and dozens of other Abilene-area amateur radio operators will toil for 24 hours, from 1 p.m. Saturday to 1 p.m. Sunday, for the American Radio Relay League’s Field Day. Hams will set up field radio communication stations, get on the air and contact thousands of other operators in the United States and Canada as part of the event, with a goal of seeing who can make the highest number of connections. But it’s not just fun and games, or idle chatter. In fact, the event is pretty serious business, Perkinson and others said. Such communication has proved vital during some of the nation’s darkest hours, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The American Radio Relay League describes amateur radio as a “popular hobby and a service” in which licensed participants operate communication with a “deep appreciation of the radio art.” Akin to amateur athletes, who are unpaid for their talents, hams are not paid for providing communications to others, the ARRL’s website says. There are an estimated 600,000 ham radio operators in the United States and a total of 2 million worldwide, according to the ARRL. Field Day is a way for hams to get outdoors and have fun under difficult conditions, said L.G. Cummins, Field Day Coordinator of the Friendly Frontier Amateur Radio Club. The daylong activity gives participants a chance to fine-tune their emergency communication skills. “We use generators and battery power, and we set up antennas in the field,” Cummins said in a news release. “The idea is to put together self-sufficient, working stations quickly and begin making contacts.” Longtime ham Gerald Dugan, 58, joined the hobby in 1989, and literally has reached out as far as the International Space Station — perhaps appropriate for someone whose father helped train astronauts for NASA. The opportunity to help other people is a big draw for Dugan, who said that events like the upcoming Field Day provide essential practice that could be applied to disasters ranging from a flood to a nuclear exchange. “We’re ready whenever something happens,” he said. Henry Klingler, who received his first amateur license in 1953, said his interest in the hobby extended back even before World War II. “The reason we started this club is to recoup the early amateur activities and the lessons we learned from that — building equipment, experimenting,” he said. Like others, his hobby has helped him reach out to the world, though he describes himself as more of a “listener than a transmitter.” “The furthest I’ve talked to lately was down in the Pacific Ocean,” he said. “A group of amateurs went down there and set up on an island, and I’ve talked to them. And there was another one that was over in the Caribbean.” With the advent of cell phones and computers, Klingler said he thought the number of licensed hams probably has dropped off “a little bit” from about 10 to 15 years ago. But at just shy of 86 years old, he has seen the hobby grow and change, and he doesn’t think it is in any danger. “There is still quite a bit of activity,” he said, including new technology such as D-STAR, Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio. The protocol came out of research by the Japan Amateur Radio League and supports voice and data transmission. Dugan is a fan of the technology, which blends amateur radio and the Internet. “I can talk anywhere in the world,” he said. Closer to home he has, through various technologies, spoken to people “just about all over the nation,” from California to Florida and numerous points in-between, he said. Hams are enthusiastic about their ability to jump in and help out when needed, Perkinson said — joking that his hobby might even save his own life. “I have a high-powered motorcycle that does about 160 miles per hour,” he said. “This keeps me off it.” |
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