I was laid up for almost five months a few years ago due to an injured lower disc. I couldn't stand or move independently for any length of time and working on cars in the garage or projects in the machine shop was impossible. Rather than just sitting on my rear end I decided to get back into HAM radio full time. I dusted off my dad's old 1960's Heathkit SB-102 HF transceiver, refurbished the power supply with new capacitors and was back in action. I worked mostly CW (Morse code) and really got back into the groove.
Fast forward two years and I built my HAM shack above my garage and expanded the equipment to include modern HF, VHF/UHF digital and analog base stations, handhelds and mobile Yaesu and ICOM transceivers. I still do a lot of CW work, but also enjoy digital DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) and YSF (Yaesu System Fusion) radio networks. I run a few DMR and YSF hotspots in my shack to allow me access to the entire world via Internet protocols.
Anyone else into the Amateur Radio hobby?
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Very cool spot you have there. I would assume the number of operators out there is much less the. Say the 70-80s
I started my naval career in visual communications - flag signals, semaphore, morse code by flashing light. The Radio Operators were always the "enemy" with their noisy RATT signals, CW and HF output. In later years our two occupations merged and at the end I was responsible for the communications control room and team onboard...lots of HF, UHF, VHF, SatCom, IP based connectivity, cryptographic operations, etc. I was a bit set in my ways by that point so a lot of the basic radio theory just went in one ear and out the other...frequency spectrums, frequency management, blah blah blah!
I could never do CW. Learning to read morse code by light required a different way of processing the dits and dahs optically rather than auditory and I just couldn't make the jump betwixt the two. I was very competent by light, reading accurately at up to 16 words per minute - any faster and it's just one steady beam of light whereas the CW is more discernable at more than twice the speed.
When I was younger, my grandpa had said something about being a ham radio operator at some point, and I have and old morse code key I got from him long before I ever ventured into the navy. I wish I had had the foresight to ask him more about it. It's a nice key...brass hardware mounted on a white marble base. Just a standard tap tap tippity tap key, no side key or speed key to it.
I have a number of "museum" pieces reflective of my career in visual signals, I need to display them better but also take some photos to share here. Then I'll talk about flashing light with aircraft...