Have We Lost the “Essence” of Ham Radio?

When I first became interested in radio as a hobby, solid state devices were just coming into use. My Dad, who was a telephone repairman, started schooling me, from the tender age of five years old, in the electronic communication art. He would bring home germanium diodes and teach me how to hook it up through a coil wound of 22ga magnet wire, on a discarded toilet paper roll and using an old set of high impedance crystal headphones. I used an alligator clip to connect this “homebrew” receiver to a nearby radiator. This was 1955. The hook was baited but my Dad introduced me to a neighbor, who lived up the street, who set the hook!

George was an old man, about 75 years old when I met him. He had strange wires strung outside his home and had a wall full of equipment that threw off an eerie glow and lots of heat. He was a “Ham”. He would sit down with me as we listened to many far off countries and distant shortwave stations and tell me where it was. He would often admonish me to not touch this chassis or that wire because it had high voltage or RF. I considered George to be somewhat “strange” yet he was always eager to explain a piece of equipment or a reason for doing a certain action. If ever there was an “Elmer”, George was it. He instilled in me a certain frugalness and inspired me to try various components and techniques when building electronic equipment. The first radio I ever built by myself was on an old wooden cigar box chassis with brass screws as connecting points for point to point wiring. The circuit was a one transistor receiver with a diode detector, a 365pf(mmf) salvaged variable capacitor, and a toilet paper roil coil. It worked magnificently! I took it to George and he was elated. It was not until many years later that I discovered just what a man George was. He graduated from MIT in 1910 as a physics major. He had a graduate degree in physics. He loved flying and was an instructor during WW1 for the boys going into the French Air Corps. He retired as a physics professor at MIT.

There are two important points that I hope will be garnered from this article. First, we all had someone who inspired us to get a ticket. A true “Elmer” did as George did, patiently guide our interest in the electronic art by example and encouragement and nourish our interest in communications. Second, we have lost the art of “homebrew”. We need to recover from the appliance operator aspect of our hobby. State of the art being what it is, it would be technologically difficult and financially impossible to design and build a radio such as a Kenwood TS-2000 or Icom IC-756 Pro. It would be like building a car from parts bought individually from the auto parts store. Simple kits can fulfill the need to homebrew and are available from several well known outlets and manufacturers. Let's not lose the “essence” of why we became hams and let's pass along our joy of the hobby to someone else as George did for me.