Ham radio and shortwave window to the World

Hello, thanks for stopping by my page. I'm 47 years old and grew up in the the San Francisco Bay Area. I have held an Amateur Radio license for 30 years. I got started in radio in 1978 as a kid in Junior High School. At the time there was a fuel crisis and the National speed limit was reduced to 55 mph, so truckers used CB to notify other drivers of speed traps and to organize blockades and convoys. The use of Citizen's Band radios in films such as Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Convoy (1978), as well as popular songs and several TV series made "CB" a National craze across the US in the mid to late 1970s. After watching the trucker movie Convoy, I got a CB and joined the 20 million Americans on the air at the time. I started with a 6-channel walkie talkie with a mobile antenna clamped on the rain gutter of the roof of my house. Eventually I upgraded to a 40-channel sideband unit and a ground plane. I found a whole bunch of new friends I talked with on a nightly basis and had fun "shootin skip" during the day, and exchanging CB QSL cards. A few years later the CB fad died and only the die hard fans remained.

Right before I had began to use SSB and understand "skip," I had an old multi-band reciever around with those "SW" (Shortwave) bands on it that I never was able to pick up anything on. So one evening I hooked up a wire to the whip antenna and hung it out my window. I started to tune slowly and picked up a voice in an English accent. It was the BBC in London England and I was amazed that I was listening to the other side of the planet from a portable radio in San Bruno. This was before the internet, cell phones, and cable TV really existed. So I was able to get international news and programming firsthand before anyone else which was really cool at the time. I got hooked on shortwave radio and got Radio Shack's Realistic DX-160 reciever for Christmas (yes Radio Shack actually sold radios at one time), and hooked up a 100 foot wire to it and spent hour after hour listening to the world from my bedroom; broadcast stations, ship-to-shore, military planes, and could even hear my neighbors on their portable phones sometimes. Pretty cool for a geeky kid. I collected several QSL cards from the shortwave broadcasters. I had another multi-band reciever that had VHF/UHF on it and I discovered the fun of listening to the action live on my local police and fire as well as eavesdropping on phone calls from boats made through the local marine operator. I also discovered the Amateur bands. I would listen for hours to 40 and 75 meters especially, often falling asleep to the Ham operators .

Radio Shack's Realistic DX-160. My first real receiver.

My friends on CB all got their Amateur licenses and I followed them, getting my Novice ticket KA6UXZ in 1982. At that time you had to go to the FCC field office to take your test. (At one point I was able to get my morse code up to about 18 wpm). Soon after, I upgraded to Technician N6HBJ and then Advanced class. I have kept that callsign ever since. At the time I had a 3-element tri-bander for HF, 40/80 meter horizontal dipole, 13-element horizontal 2 meter beam that I used mostly for SSB simplex, and a variety of verticals. When I moved away from home I became inactive for several years.

I got back on the air in 2000 from my San Francisco apartment. I currently live in a condo in my hometown of San Bruno so use only indoor antennas due to HOA restrictions. But I'm still able to work some DX. I use a 100 foot long wire on my ceiling for HF and with 100 watts I was able to work Europe during the CQ World Wide contest. One day I will have a regular house with the old antenna farm back up.

Ham radio used to be a hobby filled with radio pioneers contributing to science and pretty respected by the general public. I got into it when people really understood the theory and still built a lot of their equipment. A lot of people think it's an outdated hobby these days and are surprised it even exists. And any time there is a disaster such as Sept 11th or the Tsunami, communications systems go down and it's Ham radio operators that volunteer their time and set up first-line critically needed communications. You can talk with astronauts on the Space Shuttle, communicate directly with satellites, bounce signals off the moon, go to exotic lands on radio expeditions, or just talk with a group of friends on a nightly basis. The shortwave radio stations are still out there but most of them offer the same services via the internet and satellite radio so their not as many broadcasts on shortwave these days. But in many remote parts of the world, shortwave is the only means of getting information so I don't think it will ever completely go away. I still tune the bands trying to catch a broadcast radio station so I can get a new QSL card. I even got one from an AM medium wave station recently. Some may ask why would I bother listening through the hiss and static, trying to pick up a station when I can tune the same station on satellite or the internet. I can explain it like a hunter or fisherman; you can go buy your food at the market easily, or spend the day enjoying the sport of trying to catch it. Besides, it brings me back to being a kid on those rainy weekends spinning the dial looking for distant stations and other mysterious from around the world to tune in.

My new Grundig Satellit 750 shortwave receiver. Great bang for your buck.