Why be a ham? Free air!

Hi, welcome to my thoughts about Amateur Radio!

Some of you reading this will know me or have known me over the years, but did you know that I've been a licensed ham radio operator since I was 15 years old? Yep, you probably did. I'm sorry for boring you to tears about it... but wait, there's more!

Why, in this day and age, you ask, would anyone want to be a ham?

That's an EASY question with a LOT of answers, but first and most obvious to me, is the ability to communicate with other people instantly without depending upon huge corporations and millions of dollars worth of infrastructure. "Maybe thousands" is what my long suffering wife might say...

There are very few ways of communicating for free. The first is talking.

Directly, via speaking, is the way that mankind has communicated for thousand of years. Human language is thought to be tens of thousands of years old - written languages only a few thousand, technological speech only a hundred thirty. People can still knock on each other's door and speak to one another in person - there are people who are loathe to do so (like my next door neighbor) but it is an option open to us.

So, when we decide to communicate, is that what we do?

Nope. We pick up the phone... we let our "fingers do the walking" and punch a few buttons. Maybe the person we wish to speak with will pick up the phone. Maybe not.

We save ourselves and our friends a lot of embarrassment by calling them instead of showing up at their door. If they were at home, but didn't want to speak with us, they might feel as if they should hide instead of answering the door - after all, you may be armed. With a phone, they can simply touch one key - "Ignore" and we don't speak with them. "Come on, I know you're in there" does no good with the "Ignore" function...

...but I digress... so, we want to speak with someone who isn't a neighbor. We call. Or email. Or Text. Or, God Forbid, write a paper letter and drop it with the post office. For 44 cents they will hold what we once held in our hand and can read what we wrote - if they were paying attention in school, anyway.

But even the letter joins the call/email/text option in that it requires third parties who get money for delivering your message. The United States Postal Service once was thought to have the motto, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" but we know now that the Postal Service motto is, "This is a better job that I could possibly get doing anything else so I'm trying not to screw up. Please don't complain."


But what about the phone companies and the Internet Service Providers and cell phone carriers? They seem to have the motto, "We are going to charge you so much for our service that you're going to think twice about using it."


Whatever it is, if you want to talk to anyone, send them an email or post a letter, you're going to pay them and you're going to need to use their facilities.


Unless of course, you operate an amateur radio station. The airwaves are still free. But that might change.


73,


Mickey N4MB