Craig

Craig Miller, W8CR

The Hero Experience

Watching an interesting documentary about the rock band Pink Floyd producing the ground- breaking album, Dark Side of the Moon, I was impressed with a comment by one of the band members, David Gilmour. Gilmour, guitarist-singer- songwriter was instrumental in the labor-intensive development of the album. His statement, paraphrased, went something like “I just wish I could have listened to the record for the first time with headphones like everyone else and really enjoy it”. Those words were profound, he couldn’t experience the chart-buster like the rest of us, that’s almost sad. Experiencing something for the first time is always the best: your first airplane flight, your first kiss, your first qso. Being a licensed amateur radio operator for around 47 years, I must say I’ve experienced many firsts: rare DX qso, portable cw on top of a Utah mountain wearing skis, maritime mobile in the Virgin Islands, QRPing across Ireland, operating a special event station from a gas and steam festival and, of course, Field Day. I haven’t done it all by any means such as I’ve never successfully made a two-way contact via satellite. I’ve tried and tried and still no joy. I may jump on the saddle again some day to reach one of those tin- can transponders zooming by, at least I hope I do. Over the past year or so, I really enjoy reading and hearing the enthusiasm from many of the newer hams that have joined our club. Emails flying by announcing a qso with some exotic country, operating from a picnic table in a park or making a qso from a tablet connected to a remote rig via the internet. Soon those who are experiencing these first-time events may, too, reach a point where they are routine and long for something new to experience, to get that first rush. In fact, I just heard a ham was going to (or did) make an HF qso while sky-diving. I’ve always said the adding ham radio to anything makes it better, but sky-diving? Now that’s nuts (or cool, haven’t decided yet). Field Day is quickly approaching and, for many, may be the first. This is an experience that I highly recommend. The setting up of stations, seeing faces both familiar and soon to be familiar, the food, the bugs, the weather, the fatigue, the smells, what’s not to love? Don’t be intimidated by the radios which look complicated with a million knobs, buttons, keyboards and screens. Look at them like a musical instrument, all these switches and dials are for you to finesse to fine tune the device to eliminate interference, reduce the static and dig out the station buried down in the noise. There is nothing better than to witness the ionosphere change as the sun proceeds across the sky opening up states across the country that you couldn’t hear just moments before. Sometimes two regions that you were commanding can no longer hear you but they can hear each other. Visualize the globe and imagine how the signals are bouncing around. This is valuable experience that may come in handy some day when you find yourself needing to contact someone 800 miles away, what frequency to use, what time of day is best, what antenna to use? It’s an art. The other week during the Monday net, the topic was something like “Who is your ham radio hero”. Many very good names were voiced, all on top of their game or left us with wonderful memories. After the net, I thought of a hero that nobody mentioned. I feel the heroes of ham radio are the new licensees that will be carrying this fantastic hobby into the future. These new hams could easily have dedicated their free time and fortune on plenty of other enjoyable things but they picked amateur radio (yeah!). I’m kinda envious of the many first experiences that lay ahead for them all. Maybe not a cool as Dark Side of the Moon but pretty close!