The Garden City Telegram
Email this story | Add Your Comment
| Read (0) Comments
Ham radio operators practice skills
Published 6/29/2009 in Local News
By RACHAEL GRAY
In case of an emergency such as a natural disaster in which telephone and Internet connections would be disabled, the community would rely on these men and women.
Click to Purchase Photo Reprints!
Brad Nading/Telegram — Jim Douglass works on setting up one of the laptops for the 24-hour ham radio event at the Finney County EMS parking lot by the Sandhills Amateur Radio Club.
Click to Purchase Photo Reprints!
Brad Nading/Telegram — A receiver is set to different frequencies to see where ham radio operators voices can be picked up on.
To keep their radio skills fine-tuned, the Sandhills Amateur Radio Club of Southwest Kansas participates in a national contest and ham radio demonstration each year. The field day simulates emergency communication, and the hams operate from remote locations. The participants are awarded points for making contacts with other hams around the country. QST Publication, published by the Amateur Radio Relay League, will tally the results and publish them in six months.
This year's event ran from noon Saturday until noon Sunday.
The club set up two ham radios in a trailer at the Finney County EMS garage, 803 W. Mary St., on Saturday. They used a generator to power the trailer and radios for 24 hours.
Rod Hogg, Sandhills club member and licensed operator since 1956, said Sunday morning the hams had communicated with other hams in Hawaii, Canada and Alaska.
"But distance isn't important," he said. "The point is to just communicate with as many other hams as possible."
Hogg said communication with other Kansans is just as important as communication with hams in other states.
He said in case of emergencies, the hams would need to communicate around the state for information and supplies.
Dale Urban, Sandhills member, said ham radios became the main form of communication in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He said ham operators from across the country flocked to Louisiana to help out with the disaster.
Locally, Urban said, the hospital and police stations would contact them first if they lost their network communication in the event of mass injury or casualty.
Urban said it's not just the usefulness of the ham radios that draw him in. For Urban and other members, ham operating has been a lifelong hobby.
"If you like computers and radios, the hobby is a natural fit," he said.
Urban said ham radio operations change with the times. They now can use a program from a laptop computer to decode messages and send accurate, repeated Morse code messages, he said.
During the contest, when communication is established with another ham, the call of that ham is keyed into the computer. If the hams have communicated before, the computer will flag the communication as "duplicate." Hams can only establish communication once with each other during the contest.
Urban said computers have made that part of the contest more efficient. He said the club used to print off the logs and cross off the duplicate communication by hand.
"It would take hours, he said.
Although computers and technological advances have made certain aspects of hams more user-friendly, the seasoned Morse code operator still is appreciated.
Jim Douglass, Sandhills member, was a military radio operator during the Vietnam War. He still can code in Morse, or CW, today. Hogg and Urban said Douglass could decode 30 words per minute.
Morse code is still an important form of communication for hams because the high-pitched tones can be detected during periods of low bands, or poor atmospheric conditions when communication is difficult.
The Sandhills members also use their voices to say the call and establish communication. The third form of communication they use are packet type messages, where computers use code to send messages to other computers. The receiving computer then decodes the information into a readable message.
Hogg said e-mails can be sent or received in this manner when networks are down.
"It's like using the Internet or sending a text message, only hams are more challenging," Hogg said.
Anybody can send a text message, he said. "But it takes a little expertise to operate a ham radio," he said.
The Sandhills ham operators hope that younger people get involved, and the demonstration is one way to attract new members.
Hogg said he hopes the Internet generation takes an interest.
"Hams have done what the Internet does for ages," he said. "And even when it's down, the hams will continue."
People interested in obtaining a ham radio license can attend a one-day class July 11 at St. Catherine Hospital, 410 E. Spruce St. Call Urban at 272-0311 to pre-register.
On the Web:
Sandhills Amateur Radio Club: http://www.odsgc.net/~sharc/
Found 0 comment(s)!
Twitter Updates
