Recently I have returned to a hobby left dormant for many years, Ham Radio.
To save those confused looks on fellow hams and to hopefully avoid me telling some people to stuff the hobby where the sun don't shine, this is my short hamming story.
Back in the early 80's I had for a short time a CB radio, I clipped a mobile antenna to the metal guttering on the house and spent many wonderful nights chatting and falling asleep talking to some local girl (I'll be vague about the handle to cover my disappointment when she realised I was better in voice than person). Couldn't have had the thing for very long before I moved to a more urban location and gave it up. That was the seed of my love of radio.
Years later I had a FM set and enjoyed many laughs with the whole CB crowd in Minehead.
As I'd had a bit of a background in electronics and an enquiring mind I used to fix CB's and even a few other bits for local hams. That was when one local amateur who shall remain nameless (as he sadly died not long after this tale), challenged me about reading a Magazine for hams "What are you doing reading that magazine? that is for radio hams only".
Now I'm not competitive sort in fact I have no concept of the red mist but that just pushed a little button.
I borrowed an old book for passing the RAE and a electronic morse tutor and set about working out what, other than general electronic knowledge, they would be looking for in the exam. Not long after that I took my exam and passed, in fact I took it at the same time as the nameless hams son and the rest of the people from his college course, I came top of the class by the way (not that I'm competitive again but it fitted nicely into the plan).
I persevered with the Morse tutor and a second hand key bought as bits for £2.
I used to fall asleep with the tutor bleeping out code and characters from headphones under the pillow. At one stage I went to see a local Ham who doubled as a tutor but he was too busy to check my sending so I just plugged on alone. Took the test and the examiners were the first to hear me send, passed fault-free and because I learnt from a machine they didn't believe me that I had never actually sent code in the real world.
The culmination of this story is that the ham who originally managed to annoy me into action came in with his wife to where I was working, he was effusive to hear I had passed the radio exam, “a real achievement! Well done! Would I be working on Morse next for the full A license?” , “...er no because I already had passed that too, I mean come one this stuff is not exactly hard is it!” (at that point I managed not to smile, though I was very much inside) he looked totally crestfallen as in front of his wife I had just dismissed his beloved "manly technical hobby" as “easy stuff” to be honest I hadn't found the morse easy and I'm no expert on the radio side but I saw no exam paper on “Looking down your nose at others” during that tests so I'm buggered if I can find out where he took that as part of his “B” no-code license.
So I am M0AQY like that makes a difference.
Hams tend to judge others by call sign, I must really confuse them as the call sign is from 1996 but I won't appear in anyone’s logs or call sign servers as I have probably had about thirty hours transmitting on ham bands since taking the exam, oh and one faltering Morse exchange to say I had actually done it, somewhat choppy due to my hand shaking so much on the old Siemens key on its wooden base knocked up with a craft knife and bits of old aerial.
So if you as a Ham (radio superhero) talk to me understand this, being “once a CB user” does not mean the person before you is thick nor give you right to decide what publications I read, it might just also invite fate to pay back your dismissive output in front of the wife.
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