Funny how this hobby works. One day I was struggling to get signal out while commuting. The next day I find myself with not just one, but two mobile antennas.

Last week I ordered an MFJ 1724B dual band quarter wave mobile antenna with mag mount, and a UHF to SMA jumper cable to adapt it to my HT.  Yes, I know, to some, MFJ = Mississippi’s Finest Junk.  But I figure it can’t be that junky if it were recommended by one of our emcomm gurus on the local EARC net.  It came in the mail on Saturday.

That Saturday was also the day of the ham swap meet over at Aiea Elementary. One of the finds I found (besides a free roll of antenna wire) was a Workman KS1SMA quarter-wave rare earth magnet mount dual band mobile antenna.  Only $15. 

What a difference getting the metal outside the vehicle makes!  I was able to hit the 146.88 repeater from just outside the Honolulu-bound Pali Tunnels!  Yes, that far into Nuuanu Valley.  On the HT from in the vehicle, it would have been a 50-50 shot from the Queen Emma Summer Palace.

Right now I’ve been operating my base off a half-wave dual-band, a Diamond NR73BNMO on loan from Ron (AH6RH).  I’ve been able to get good results on 146.88 on 10-20 watts from Kailua (pretty good, considering I’m operating it indoors right now and having to hurl the signal over the Koolaus to get to Diamond Head).

Alas, all good things come to an end; Ron wants his antenna back (along with the speaker and the SWR meter) so that he can give a full rig to another new ham.

Fortunately, after several tries I was able to jury rig the 1724B with a ground plane to give an acceptable SWR (about 1.7). Let’s just say that it involved a pizza pan and a whole lot of aluminum foil.  So now I have a substitute base in my 1724B and the KS1 is atop my vehicle.  Eventually I’m going to need to find a place to mount a permanent antenna.  I’m thinking about mounting it off one of the eaves.  But we’ll see.

Hams have a reputation to uphold. We are, after all, the communication service that works when all else fails. The ARRL fawns all over stories giving the amateur radio service rave reviews.

Then you get a story like this.

Via Long Delayed Echoes comes this story from Everett, Washington. A neighborhood in this Seattle suburb has been suffering from the antics of a certain operator:

Laura Holland says a vulgar rant came through her TV while she was watching a movie.

She says the source is her neighbor, a ham radio operator whose strong signal feeds every word of his transmissions directly to his neighbors every day.

Holland posted a video (with full audio) of the ham’s voice, in flagrante delicto, superimposed over a television movie. (WARNING! CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE!) Two Seattle television stations, KOMO and KING, covered the story.

Looking on Switchboard.com and cross-checking it against QRZ.com found that the ham in question may be one Anthony Peluso, AB7OP.  He lives right across the street from Holland.

Hunh?!?  An Extra pulling stuff like this? What struck me as funny was the statement on his QRZ page that says “my family is the most important aspect in my life.” Never mind his family. What about the poor families in the immediate neighborhood?

I mean, one of the first things I read in my “red book” in the section on licensing rules and regs is that obscene and indecent language is prohibited. And further research shows this is true not just on the ham bands (FCC rules 97.113(a)(4)) but also on CB (95.413(a)(2)).

Holland and others in the area have filed formal complaints with the FCC, and maybe we might see this guy’s name show up on the Enforcement Bureau page (otherwise known as the Amateur Radio Hall of Shame) in the near future, named in a strongly worded letter from Riley Hollingsworth.

I don’t think I was much older than about ten or eleven.  There I sat, messing with an old Sony AM radio, one with a knob with “MW,” “SW1″, and “SW2″.  Not that I really knew what those abbreviations meant back then.  Just out of curiosity, I turned the knob to SW1.  At first, as I turned the tuning knob, I heard a whole bunch of nothing.  Static.  White noise.  

But when I passed by the 5 on the dial, I heard what sounded like a telephone dial tone that clicked every second, just like a clock and telephone together.  Suddenly, the dial tone disappeared, and all I heard were clicks, then a female voice that said, “At the tone, 5 hours, 47 minutes Coordinated Universal Time.”  Then a beep.  Then the dial tone again.

I didn’t realize it then, but I had heard WWVH for the first time. That was the first time I realized that radio encompassed more than just the AM and FM dial.

As I came back to that radio again and again, I made further discoveries.  Weird beeping and twittering on certain frequencies.  Then voices.  Voices coming from faraway lands like China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Britain.  I had stumbled on a new world – the world of world band, or shortwave, radio.

I still listen to shortwave now and again.  I don’t have that Sony radio anymore, but I’ve since traded it in for a Grundig S350, which I still listen to every once in a while.

As I learned more about the shortwave bands, and found out that amateur radio operators occupied several parts of the shortwave bands, I think I probably thought a few times about becoming a ham.  What deterred me was the fact that in order to get a license, I needed to learn Morse Code. 

Morse Code?!?  It seems easier to learn ancient Greek.  Or so I thought.

Since then the Morse code requirements were modified, then eliminated entirely in February.  What finally gave me the motivation I needed was the story of Ron Hashiro, AH6RH, who made contact with the International Space Station and the first space tourist, Charles Simonyi.

Ron’s exploits made our company newsletter (we both work in the Information Systems department at HMSA). Then, as I browsed our local Barnes & Noble I ran across the “red book,” the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual.  At that point some thing just clicked.

I bought the book and devoured it in less than a month’s time, passing my Technician exam on June 20.

Since then, Ron has been a valuable resource in helping me get started. He invited me to my first Field Day, and I was intrigued by all the different radios there and made my first IRLP contact with a ham in Alaska.  He even lent me an antenna, radio, and power supply to get started.  I’ve since gotten a dual-band walkie and a dual band radio of my own.

So…that’s the story so far.  I’ve gotten the General level manual and have been studying it in my free time, with a goal of upgrading within the year.  I imagine, though, that even after I’ve had my Extra for twenty years, I’ll still be learning new things.