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| Why Ham Radio? |
By a simple process of elimination, we were left with amateur radio. And, after accepting our fate, we got excited about its possibilities, as both a hobby and as a community service. Anyway, if you're considering any of those other forms of electronic communication, refer to the following paragraphs to see which meets your needs. If your needs are similar to what ours were, you'll end up with only one possibility: amateur radio.
Beyond the investment in equipment, ham radio can cost you nothing but time and effort. And after a while, communicating becomes effortless. $150 will get you a good, used handheld radio. Add $50 for extra batteries, a carrying case, etc. and you're set. Pay $6.25 to take the amateur license exam, pass it, and that can be the absolute end of your spending on the hobby, if you wish.
Phone systems, whether local, long distance, or cellular, can and do shut down (see Story 1 below). If your radio's battery is charged, you will be able to contact another radio within range no matter what. A repeater, if operational, will extend your range, but it isn't absolutely necessary for radio-to-radio contact. And because you can talk radio-to-radio, you don't have to worry about "calling areas." No matter where you are in the world, you can talk to someone else who is tuned to the same frequency and is within range. That's a big freedom.
Ham radio is regulated by the FCC, and those regulations help control the content of amateur radio conversation. For example, using amateur radio, you can't use bad language on the air, you have to identify yourself, and polite procedures are in place for smoothly moving traffic from one busy frequency to another, less-used one. The hams themselves are a "cut above," with most acting very professionally on the air. You'll never find a shortage of helpful advice, as experienced hams jump at the chance to take newbies under their wings & teach them the ropes.
And amateur radio is two-way communication, which allows interaction that broadcast communication (like radio and television) does not.
I was stuck in traffic for almost three hours, during what is usually a 30-minute commute. I wished I had a cell phone, until I listened to the nightly news the next day: "...during last night's traffic delays at Point of the Mountain, fully 70% of all cellular calls placed were not completed, because of overloading of the cellular system..."
I was aghast. I was appalled. We were not hit by an earthquake, a flood, a suddenly "spunky" volcano, locusts, or other pestilences. This was just traffic. I didn't know whether to be frustrated with the cellular companies who weren't set up to handle the cell traffic or with the panicked commuters who evidently were so all-a-flutter over the prospect of a Los Angeles-speed commute that they had to call all their loved ones and convey their last wishes: "Honey don't panic but this may be the last I speak to you tell the kids I love them feed my goldfish hug our children I'm so scared could you please hum 'Nearer, my God, to Thee'?"
That was a true story to illustrate a point: cellular isn't reliable. It wasn't built to be reliable--it was built to be convenient, which it definitely is. You want convenience? Buy a cell phone and pay the associated service charges. You want reliability? Go for some type of radio system. With a radio, you can communicate with another radio any time as long as you've got battery juice and you're within range. Although radio won't meet all of your communication needs, it can take care of your most important needs--communicating with others, possibly loved ones, in an emergency.
It has brake problems, but we just got our tax return, so I can take it into the shop tomorrow to get the brakes checked out. My exit's coming up, and--AAAUUGHHhh!--there's a whole line of cars backed up for a quarter mile behind the exit! Well, I'll just slow down here... [I step on the brake pedal]...
SSssssquiiiishhh goes my brake pedal, clear to the floor. Ordinarily, that sound by itself would be a welcome one, heralding my success at running over a snake lengthwise. But when my brakes make the sound, accompanied by not-even-a-little decrease in speed, I don't feel like raising my arms straight up through my sunroof in a victory wave; I feel more like screaming all sorts of naughty words while my hands & brain blur in a frantic attempt to avoid impacting the nearby shiny scratchless cars.
A fortuitous hole in traffic opens just when & where I need it, and I steer off onto the shoulder. I notice that my foot which has a mind of its own is still madly pumping the brake pedal. I tell it to stop, and it does. I pry my fingers off the steering wheel. I listen to the rush of traffic. I listen to my pounding heartbeat. And I realize that I'm stranded.
I'm a half-hour from home and I feel friendless. And I need to go. Really bad. Saying that "Nature is calling" would be putting it mildly. Nature is screaming at me and giving me noogies.
So I need to take care of Number 1 (me) and the other Number 1 (you-know) and Number 2 (you-also-know), and I haven't facilities for either. Well, you could argue that the roadside itself is "facility" enough for a male-oriented Number 1 job, but I still have my dignity. I hold.
Time to play "mechanic." I step out of the car and immediately notice a puddle of what must be DOT-3 type brake fluid beneath my left rear tire. I crawl under the already-low-to-the-ground-because-the-suspension-is-shot car, and confirm what I suspected: I don't know squat about brakes. I need a tow truck. And friend bladder tells me I need a tow truck fast.
While behind the car, I notice another danger: my out-of-state, expired license plate. Oh, it's still valid as a license plate per se, but state troopers may take issue with the 7-month expired registration sticker. So now I'm torn between wanting and needing help, and not wanting an overly-friendly trooper to notice my plates. In a shameless attempt to hide my felonious plates, I pop the trunk and hang an old trash bag out the opening, mostly covering the plate. "Look at me, I'm just a nondescript trashbag that's hiding a license plate, don't mind me, just keep driving by, officer, nothing to see here tee hee hee."
I get back in the car, despondent, then notice the newest member of my techno-toy family, an ICOM IC-T21A amateur radio handheld transciever. Connected to a mobile antenna for clear signal reception and transmission. Connected to the car battery for maximum signal strength. Oh, yeah.
I fire it up and call my wife on the Point of the Mountain repeater, and she responds immediately. She tells me that two weeks earlier, she had activated a one-month free trial offer of an automobile club, which includes free towing. Oh, yeah. While I wait on the radio, she'll call the auto club and see if they can locate a tow truck. This is great. It won't cost us a dime to tow it. I sit back and let my wife take care of the details. The "details" take half an hour, while my, uh, "other" situation gets more critical. The spreading puddle of brake fluid seems to mock my discomfort.
I feel self-conscious about the trash bag, so I put it back in the trunk. I still don't want a trooper to stop, so using the logic "troopers won't stop to help a stranded motorist who can get help themselves using a phone or radio," I keep my radio raised high enough so even people in the next county would look off in the distance and think, "Look. That stranded motorist has an ICOM IC-T21A handheld transceiver. He doesn't need my help." The strategy works, as I notice during the wait that two state trooper cars pass me, touch on their brakes, then continue on. Yes!
The auto club fails to find a tow truck, but says they'll reimburse us if we find one. So my wife does, and the truck shows up with a friendly driver who was born in Colorado but raised in Arizona and had served in the Marines stationed all over the world but his favorite part was the Orient he'd like to go back some day and he works with chemicals but now he has this second job towing to help pay the bills and child support because he recently got divorced. Ten minutes and five miles later, I am helping him unload the car at Pep Boys when I hear my wife call me on the radio. She is coming to meet me there, but she's a little disoriented, so I am able to guide her in using the radio.
So the radio came in handy. In fact, it was just three days before that my wife got her radio! Timing, eh? But why, you ask, would a radio be better than a cell phone in this case? Well, it's not really better, just different. I was able to talk to the person I wanted to, and we talked for about an hour with no charge on a phone bill. If she hadn't had a radio, I could have used the repeater's autopatch capabilities to call any phone number I wanted in either county (like a tow truck, if I had a phone book in the car with me).