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I learned of amatuer radio when I was very Young, probably five years old from
a freind of my father's which was way into dx contacts and cw. When we would
visit him at his home, I would be fasinated in all of his radios and stories
about contacting distant places. The more I showed an intrest the more he would
talk about his experiences and demonstrate the use of the radios he used,
communicating with folks all over useing nothing more than a beep and beeeep,
which was very strange and facinating to me as a youngster. This I had to try,
so my fathers freind, now my freind gave me a set of tapes to learn this
strange language and a keyer to practice with. Each time we would see him after
that he would ask me how my morse code was comming and to his suprise I was
doing well with it. Due to the fact that I was one of four children and my
mother and father struggled to make ends meet like many families, I never did
get that radio I wanted so badly and eventualy lost sight of my dream to send
those funny sounds to other people from around the world. Every time the
subject would come up later in life, I had this empty space in me that I knew
someday I would be able to fill, and would revisit those memories of my fathers
freind who was no longer around, and his room of radios, and that smell. The
smell of radios and wires or whatever that smell was, but I think you know what
I'm talking about.
Many years had past and I now had a son. Though I knew I would never be able to
give him everything he would want or all I would love to give him, I swore to
myself that he and I would explore the dreams he would have, to the best of my
ability. This meant letting go of the many dreams I had as a child, well little
did I know he would grow up with almost the exact same intrests as me, so much
so that my freinds named him minnie me. We fished, camped, wood crved, flew
small air craft, and allot more, we even work together now on a small buisness
we started. With more fulfillment of past dreams than a resonable man could ask
for, taking a walk one day with my son to do yet another favorite past time,
Photography, we ran into a freind of mine, Tim KC8ZTI whom had recently aquired
his amatuer radio opperator license. As Tim and I talked about his new hobbie
and I shared the fact that I was hooked when I was young, the fond memories of
those funny sounds and that smell and of course my fathers freind came rushing
back to me like a frieght train. I turned to look at my son, who is never far
from my side, as my freind continued on about the many possibilities of amatuer
radio, and almost like he was thinking the same thing I was, he stated that
"Even the boy could attain a Ham license. There is no age limit."
BOOM!!! There was that look in my sons eyes, and he said he was just about to
ask how old you had to be. I know it must sound funny to many folks that a
person could be so entranced by a "stupid radio", as I've heard it
reffered to as, but "--- .... .-- . .-.. .-.." let them wonder!
It didn't take long and we had our noses in a book and soon after there was a
birth of a new call sign and another soon to come. That empty space inside of
me was filled and now I don't have to go far at all to smell that smell that
made me walk into radio shack everytime I visited the mall.
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