Anyway, you should do your best

If you have any questions as to ham radio, feel free to ask me, or take a look at Ron Hashiro’s site (see the link above). I think you’d like amateur radio.

73, WH7GG

I never went the ham route. I loved SW when I was young. I still have a Yaesu rig, but listen to podcasts of BBC and Radio France and Radio Japan these days. I don’t miss the static, although the QSLs and radio hunts were fun when I was young.

73s
See ya at some flickr meetup

I volunteered for Sunday evenings because at that time, I was pretty much guaranteed to be at the radio during the 7:30 pm start time.

I knew what to do. I had the script (no email back then. I had copied the text from the air.) so, I just started out in the same fashion as Bob.

I think I had asked Bob prior to the net what do I do after I take the check-ins, and he replied something to the effect as NCS, I could do anything I wanted — meaning, I could hold a round table, I could ask the group a question, etc. That first night, I just ran a roundtable, just like Bob.

That skill of being an NCS, and taking things on the fly came in very handily later. Having run the nets nightly on Sundays for four years, I relinquished it to do other things in the community for the world of amateur radio. That included working with Robin, AH6CP to further build Hawaii State CD RACES, and assist Ray Moody with Oahu CD Agency RACES. Yearly Simulated Emergency Tests (SETs), classes on emergency communications were but a few of the activities.

Those skills became handy on Friday, Sept 11, 1992. I arrived at State CD at 4:00 pm, to get ready for the siren net at 5:00 am (the sirens didn’t blow on schedule, so it was reset to 5:30 am). After that point, Iniki operations became one huge blur. There was no net script. This was no drill. Things came flying in one after another, and it was a matter of responding to each one. I remember the flow of events and various fragments, which became the foundation for the QST article, but there’s more that hasn’t been told.

And, those many nights being an NCS on the EARC nightly net honed the lightning fast listening and operating skills (plus the many years served doing system management and the long weary nights upgrading computer systems prepared me for the long haul) that were invaluable on Friday night, Sept 11, 1992 when I had to run the amateur radio side of SCD solo (Robin was being prepared to fly to Kauai to resurrect broken radio systems).

All the helicopters on Kauai was damaged in the hurricane, and the roads were strewn with fallen telephone poles and debris that ambulances couldn’t drive. That night, we were fighting to keep wounded people alive. We kept them alive with hope and the word that the choppers would fly from Schofield and be there in the light of the new day to fly them to surgery at Wilcox Hospital in Lihue.

Looking back, operations during Iniki has made me a better contester — which I’d love to do if I had the time and the station. These days, contesting is for fun. But tomorrow, one never knows if we have to once again dust off our NCS, contesting, message-handling and endurance skills with the next, unseen call to action.

Remember. It takes two, not one, skilled and ready ham radio stations to pass a message.