Rip Van Winkle Meets 21st Century Amateur Radio

Today I spoke with Eric Guth, 4Z1UG, about his QSO Today podcast. He interviews the movers and shakers in amateur radio where they tell their story from first interest to current activities. So many of his guests share a similar story — they were absent from amateur radio for a number of years while college, career, and family got in the way. When they found the time later in life, they came back to discover an entirely new hobby.

That reminded me of my own journey that I documented in an article for the ARRL’s website in 2007. Here’s that article which makes for interesting reading in the context of all the ham radio updates that are present right now in 2018. 

Rip Van Winkle Meets 21st Century Amateur Radio

When Washington Irving wrote the story of Rip Van Winkle, radio had not yet come to pass. In the  story Rip slept for 20 years. When he awoke, his wife and most of his friends were dead, the American Revolution had been fought and won and he faced a drastically different world. My own story is not nearly as tragic but quite remarkable nonetheless.

My “sleep” — from Amateur Radio — lasted a bit longer than 20 years (I must have overslept; this happens to me from time to time). When I awoke, I discovered a significantly different world. Most of you remained “awake” during this era. No doubt,you absorbed the many changes — or at least dealt with them — one at a time and gradually. My experience turned out to be quite an “eye opener.”

My story begins in 1973, when I passed  the Conditional class license exam and was granted the call sign WB0JXY [under the system in place at that  time,  applicants living too far from  a regular FCC examination point could obtain a Conditional ticket by taking a locally administered examination sent via the mail.  Privileges were equivalent to the General license —Ed.].

My ham radio experience mostly entailed building gear, making a contact with it then starting on the next project. About the same time, my career and hobby converged when  I began work at Heathkit as an educational writer. My big projects were the Amateur Radio General Class License Home Study Course, written in 1979, followed by the Electronic Communications course. During this time I upgraded to Advanced Class and became KB8CE. My operating activities consisted of RTTY using a Teletype Model 19 (keyboard, tape punch, printer) various rack- mounted gear, including homebrew RTTY gear and an R-388 receiver. I also used a Heathkit 2 kW linear. It filled up my small room in the basement.

Sleep Mode

In 1981, after a fair bit  of operating with this setup, I sold all my equipment and promptly went into Amateur Radio sleep mode.

It wasn’t until the early days of the 21st century that I began emerging from my long hiatus from ham radio. My awakening started when I was listening to an AM broadcast station in my car on the way to work one morning. As it would fade in and out due to its nighttime antenna pattern and power, I began getting get nostalgic for those Amateur  Radio days when I strained to hear a DX station through the QSB, QRN and QRM (fading, noise and interference).

It wasn’t until an occasional Internet search for “ARRL” and “73 magazine” that I got my first indication that things had changed. 73 was now dead! This magazine had given me my start in publishing, when I wrote some articles and a book for Wayne Green. Egads!  But,  even faced with this alarming news — and perhaps because of it — I pushed the “snooze” button and dozed on.

Some time later, I peered out from beneath my covers to look at the ARRL Web site. Here I learned about the remarkable changes in the Morse code requirement — 5 WPM  for General and Extra — and the demise of the Advanced ticket (not to mention Novice class) that had occurred during my sleep.  Had my slumber continued I would have been shocked at the death of the code requirement. I also took note of “volunteer examiners” and “volunteer examiner coordinators.”

Oh well, hit the snooze button again. By this time, though, I was already dreaming of becoming an Amateur Extra class license holder.

As I started emerging from sleep, I looked into this VEC thing and discovered that all examination questions were publicly available as something called a “question  pool.” I printed out the Extra class question pool page after page after page, set it on my nightstand and . . . promptly returned to sleep.

A Nightmare

This time I experienced a nightmare as I contemplated what I’d glimpsed in the examination questions: Concepts I once knew but left in the past, plus new concepts and, of course, the regulations, all of which seemed new.

Upon awakening from this troubled sleep, I caught sight of the vanity call sign program,  whereby you could request an available call sign. Who knew? As I dozed off yet again, an action plan was beginning to take shape: Slog my way through the question pool, take the Extra test and then get the call sign of my choice. Plan, work, and reward started coming into mind, not to mention the thought of getting back on the air with  simple equipment and getting involved with CW — something that had always been a goal of mine.

Ultimately, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, firmly resolved to move out of my dream world and actually start moving toward the goals that had taken shape as I was coming out of my long slumber. That’s when the discoveries started to multiply. Despite the astounding changes I’d already encountered as I was in the Twilight Zone between sleeping and awakening.

The first of many surprises occurred as I tackled my action plan. I quickly acquired the ARRL Extra Class License Manual and laboriously began to work my way through the chapters and every question in the pool. With 800-some questions in all, it was somewhat  daunting, as many of you no doubt had already discovered.

The Assault Continues

With a steady schedule of evening study sessions, however, I continued my assault.  As I began to contemplate actually taking the test I realized I needed some practice exams  to really be ready. At this point I searched the Internet and found several readily available sources of practice exams, all with randomly selected questions, administered on the Web with instant scoring and all for free!

How remarkable and generous it was of these several dedicated hams to put up these practice exam sites for our use. After the first practice exam, I immediately felt  better about my prospects with the actual exam. First, the 50-question test turned out to be not nearly as daunting as trying to digest the full question pool. Second, I could take as many practice exams as necessary to really prepare myself.

Then came my experience with the VEC system. In the past, both for amateur and commercial radiotelephone licenses, I’d trekked to the FCC office and toiled over the exam, then waited for a couple of weeks to learn through the mail whether or not I’d passed. In  this new regime, several volunteer examiners provided the exam at a location and on the date that best served my needs. How did that happen?

While I was taking the exam, several volunteers very conscientiously monitored the examination process, rigorously checking and double-checking the answers and then providing the results and a Certificate of Successful Completion of Examination (CSCE) right then and there! That is customer service and streamlined processing at its very best! The wonders of awakening from my 20+ years of sleep continued to amaze me.

After achieving the goal of becoming an Amateur Extra class licensee, I set about rewarding myself with a vanity call sign. For this, I consulted the ARRL Web site, and from there I went  to some Web sites that focused exclusively on the vanity call sign process and pitfalls to avoid. In addition, these sites posted lists of all available call signs, information on other call signs and when they’d come available, and the status of vanity applications pending before the FCC. Moreover, they provided this truly extraordinary and frequently updated source of information for free! “Rip Van Wilson” had awakened to some significant changes.

Now it was time to build my station. Holy Cow! The options were abundant. My target was a simple CW station, but, boy, what choices. I drooled over the top-of-the-line equipment — mostly digital and computerized with LCD displays plus some knobs to satisfy the old time ham operator in us all. The few remaining kits (recalling my Heathkit background) were staggering in terms of the performance they delivered . . . and in such small packages.

In the end I installed a used solid-state rig that, while not exactly state of the art, it still beat my old tube-type rigs by a country mile.

Where Have All the Novices Gone?

My “Rip Van Wilson” operating experiences continued to surprise and amaze. Where did all the Novices go? Gee whiz, they were always good for  some low-speed code practice and an injection of enthusiasm. I miss those folks. However, the operating support was staggering. Just with my brief experience I’ve discovered the online call sign sites that allow me to look up the address and bio of anybody I’m in communication with, right then and there via the Internet. I’ve also stumbled across the online DX spotting sites that show me in real time what DX stations are operating and where. Plus, I’m just now in the process of signing up for the Logbook of The World (LoTW). Ham radio has become a digitalworld!

With this in mind, I looked into what had become of RTTY. I could still hear some of these folks on the air, particularly during contests. But what of this “digital communication” I was reading about in QST? To further my investigation, I downloaded some software — a free trial version of course. Rip thought, “What a wonderful thing is this Internet.”  Then I ran a simple cable from my rig to my laptop, read a couple of pages in the user guide and presto! I was looking at a PSK31 waterfall display. A few clicks later and I was watching a digital QSO in what must be the narrowest bandwidth and the simplest setup ever.

Good grief! This is truly a breakthrough in operating simplicity, bandwidth, and good plain fun. And it just keeps getting better as “Rip Van Wilson” has yet to look into packet and the various other digital modes.

I Will Snooze No More

Will I ever go back to “sleep” again? Not on your life! This is way too  exciting. Considering  events like the elimination of the Morse code requirement, Amateur Radio promises to stay exciting for the foreseeable future. I encourage all of you who, like me, keep pressing the snooze button, rolling over and going back to sleep, to jump out of bed, smell the coffee  and dive into the continuously improving world of Amateur Radio. Hurry up! Things are moving ahead rapidly.

Well, I probably do need to take a nap now to recover from the shock of discovery and the effort I put forth to get back into this wonderful hobby. Where did I leave my blanket, and what was  it I was drinking before I fell asleep the first time?

Following a more than 20 year absence from Amateur Radio that began in 1981, Jim Wilson gradually rejuvenated his interest in ham radio, obtaining his Amateur Extra class license in 2006 and the vanity call sign K5ND (appropriately “new day”). From 1977 to 1989, Jim worked for Heathkit, where he wrote the company’s Amateur Radio General Class License home study course. It used the Farnsworth method and an early personal computer to generate Morse code practice. He went on to write Heath’s Electronic Communication home study course and textbooks as well as  other publications.  He also served as  product line manager of Heathkit’s educational products. He’s currently associate publisher and director of  the Custom Communication Division of the Boy Scouts of America. Jim holds a bachelor’s of applied science in electronics engineering technology plus master’s degrees in management and business administration.He lives in Grapevine, Texas.

Originally published on the ARRL website in 2007.