Your Biggest Thrills in Amateur Radio?

Doug Hall

"Sometimes when someone disagrees with a comment they let it go."

Really, Walt? You feel free to denigrate a huge group of people most of whom you don't even know (those who received their licenses without having passed a code test) but you expect anyone who disagrees to keep their mouth shut?

I agree with Greg and Jim. People have been lamenting the demise of ham radio for nearly 100 years. I have a whole shelf of QST going back to the beginning, and every few months someone writes in complaining that ham radio is going to **** in a handbasket. The CW guys blamed the phone guys, the AM guys blamed the SSB guys, everyone blamed incentive licensing, and now they're blaming the no-coders. But nobody ever presents any hard evidence to support their assertion that things are getting worse. And I don't think they are.

And if you disagree with this you can just "let it go" :-)

Doug K4DSP

KY6LA_Howard

I was licensed in 1958... if anything the Lids were much worse back then... by comparison the new guys are quite polite, most actually listen before they transmit., have clean radios that do not splatter across multiple bands and hardly anyone thinks that they OWN A FREQUENCY today... I think most of the current bitching is a result of Senior Moments - when we think about the "Good Old Days" and forget all the bad stuff that was around back then.

Frankly I am glad that the "Bad Old Days" are mostly dead and buried...

Rick Hadley - W0FG

I've been licensed 52 years.  I don't know where I'd start to count the biggest thrills...  Maybe my first Novice contact & QSL from WN9GYF (SK), the huge ragchews we used to have on 3970 as part of the informal Iowa Fertilizer Net in the 60s,  the pileup of JAs I couldn't work from KA7CW, when I was stationed in Japan (we weren't allowed to work JA nationals from a "military" station), my first Collins rig (75A-4 & KWS-1), upgrading to my S-Line, working MIR from my 2m mobile in '89, DXCC, getting the 6500, finally working TX3X....where does it end?

W7NGA

My biggest thrill was after inadvertently touching the 600 volts atop the 807 tube in my first home-brewed transmitter in 1964, that I was still breathing when I woke up on the floor! When you are 14 you are immortal ... and I can't say it didn't happen several times afterwards!

Jim Best

Congratulations on surviving that!

Doug Hall

And all these years later it's still true... too many "807s" and you end up on the floor! :-)

Steve W6SDM

The lack of Morse code led to the demise of amateur radio.

Now, if we follow that logic, then amateurs should also have to pass a physical agility test, speak at least two languages, have a minimum four-year degree with post graduate work needed for complete amateur privileges, play the piano, learn to travel faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall buildings in a single bound...  then the bands would be perfect without any lids.  Actually, the bands would be perpetually quiet.

Removing the Morse requirement actually led to an increase in amateur radio licenses being issued, reversing many years of decline.  The truth is that new hams DO have to work to obtain a license.  And taking the Extra is no small chore at all.

I operate primarily CW, primarily DXing.  I see just as many jerks in the CW pileups as I do in phone.  I know my memory is fading but I don't believe there's a change in the lid-to-good-op ratio since I started operating in the 1960s.

Steve W6SDM

My biggest thrill was receiving a QSL card from JE1XEE on February 13, 1967, confirming that my home brew 75-watt, rock bound, transmitter had actually allowed me to talk across the Pacific to Japan.  Until then, I don't think anyone actually believed that the gear I had so meticulously put together was actually capable of trans-oceanic communication.

While I have thousands of JA QSL cards, courtesy of the bureau, that one has a very special place on my wall.  It's the first QSL from outside the North American continent that I received.

Burt Fisher

My daughter got her license when she was eight, yeah that was really a lot of work when an eight year old can pass it.

km9r.mike

1. Novice tix (ka9ikp) and 1st cw qso after getting that tix in the mail.
2. Being an op in a w1aw/x centennial station.
3. Being invited to operate cw from a contest superstation.
4. The performance of my 6300.

DH2ID

1. Experiencing the ham spirit and genuine friendship of my fellow hams here
    and all over the world.
    I value this more than all the technical improvements and accomplishments.
2. Getting my licence together with my wife, who acquired it just out of love and
    good fellowship.
3. Sitting at anchor in lee of a small island on the Norwegian coast aboard
    my Colin Archer ketch SKUA and making contacts with my wife and
    friends at home and being able to send them emails over the air using
    PACTOR.  A single-handed sailor sometimes needs company
    (and technical advice).
4. Having a problem with my Peugeot boat's engine in some lonely place in the
    Faroe islands and getting help from a South African ham who had almost
    exactly the same boat's engine.
5. Making my first full duplex RTTY QSO with my two big Siemens RTTY
    machines. They were loud and I loved their "electrical" smell!
6. Making my first QSO with New Zealand over AMSAT-OSCAR 10.
7. Making my first QSO with the ISS.
8. Getting a lot of help here on the forum.