KØXB - Rick at
Ham Radio
When I was six or seven
years old, my parents gave me a marvelous toy. It was a plastic box with a
speaker and a microphone, and it had a second microphone and speaker connected
to it on the end of a long piece of wire. You talked as loud as you could into
one of the microphones, and the person at the other end might be able to hear
you, barely. It didn’t have any batteries, so it must have relied on acoustic
energy. My best friend Jim (now KCØAA) and I spent hours with it. We’d route
the wire around corners, into other rooms, through a window to the outside, and
talk and talk and talk.
I remember clearly
someone was watching (It might have been my grandfather, but I cannot say for
sure), and he or she told us about ham radio operators. That is when I got the
idea of becoming a ham. It took another ten years to get my license, but I have
been fascinated with this hobby ever since. Years ago, I told my wife, “This is
who I am.”
The next big step for me
was when I got my first “real” shortwave radio. It was an RME-45 receiver. I
had been listening to shortwave broadcasts on my parent’s Philco and my great
aunt’s Westinghouse console radios, but this looked like something a ham would
use. It even had a crystal phasing control, whatever that was. I strung a
long-wire antenna outside, and I spent my free time listening to broadcasts from
all over the world. I kept a log; I sent reports to the stations I received;
and I started to collect QSL cards. This was also an excellent way to learn
geography. (Where in the world are the Windward Islands, anyway?)
As a member of the Boy
Scouts, you had to learn Morse code in order to earn a First-Class badge. I
think I would have learned the code anyway, since I wanted to earn my ham
license. But this was an incentive to get it done right away. My Dad gave me a
key and other equipment so I could practice, and it didn’t take much time. After
all, memorizing twenty-six things is not that hard. My friend Bob was a scout
and wanted to be a ham too. Soon, he and I were communicating back-and-forth in
code. I passed the tests and was licensed as a Novice with the callsign WNØAPN
in September, 1961.
My Dad and I installed my
first antenna, and it worked well enough to have fun. I was on the air by
November. Chris VE4NE answered my CQ on 80 meters for my very first QSO, and by
the end of 1961 I had worked eighteen states and provinces in the
Ham radio is a unique and
special hobby. It allows people all over the world to have immediate,
one-on-one conversations regardless of their background, regardless of
politics, and regardless of all the other things which separate people.
Rick Borken KØXB
Lake Vermilion, Minnesota
January 8, 2006; revised
July 20, 2013, February 15, 2019