Here are some of my radio stories, the ones I think need to be remembered. Here I have attempted to tell what makes amateur radio one of the most amazing things I've ever been a part of. The people in ham radio are some of the best I have ever known. I want them and everyone else to know that.73, Virginia Smith NV5F
I went off the air abruptly in early 2013. I was off for over three years. And while the breadth and depth of my reason for this absence cannot be described here, suffice it to say that it was personal and devastating in a way that was quiet and unnoticed by most, except perhaps all the other hams who wondered where I was.
For the last two years I have made a decisive return to amateur radio with a fervor that can only be matched by how I felt about it back in 1998 when I was studying for my first license. I have enjoyed more and learned more and done more in the past two years than in all my years previous. It feels as if I was waiting all that time for something to come along and convince me that I really belonged in ham radio. And that it did.
In spring of 2016 a friend from the local radio club, of which I had previously been a member, as well as an officer, called me up out of the blue one day and asked me if I would make a special "get well" QSL card from the club to one of the members who was fighting a serious illness. I was reminded that I had done this once before for another member several years ago when he had been in the hospital for several weeks. I gladly agreed and said I'd like to attend the next meeting to bring the card myself so everyone could sign it for our friend Terry Lines KD5RA, who - sadly - would not see the end of the summer.
By the end of that club meeting in late May, I had been deeply affected by the warm welcome back I had received from everyone. I had missed them - and radio - more than I had relized, amd things had changed so much. There were a lot of new faces, however things seemed in need of some livening up at the Arlington Amateur Radio Club. It felt like it was time for me to come back. By the end of that summer I had been asked to reprise my old role as Vice Preisdent/Program Director, and I gladly accepted.
That same spring I found a book I had been given years before and had glanced at from time to time. This colorful volume featuring highlights from the lifelong QSL collection of a now silent key was entitled Hello World, a Life in Ham Radio and was nothing less than a very well-executed intro to ham radio for the uninitiated, written and illustraed by Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre. That having been said, I beileve any ham would find it enjoyable as it reminds us all of why we are even amateur radio operators in the first place.
The authors (who became hams in the process of writing it) are two guys who ran across the aformentioned QSL cards, all neatly bound in a notebook at an estate sale and were fascinated enough to research the ham who had collected them, putting together some very detailed and colorful accounts relating to many of the specific cards. I sat at my kitchen table every morning for a couple weeks carefully reading the entire book, which also contains engaging text and illustrtions and reminded me of a few things I had forgotten about ham radio, along with teaching me a bunch of thigs I hadn't known all this time. Why would anyone NOT want to be a ham after reading this?! I sure wanted to!
And by the end I wondered why I had been away so long. In fact I was deeply moved by the accounts in the closing pages of the book, but exceptionally so by the very last illustration, which was the back of one of the QSL cards from the collection of Gerry Powell W2OJW. It was a card he had recieved from a ham in Colombia. There were some notes scrawled on it in blue ink, and along the bottom of the card was printed in old style courrier typeface - in Spanish and English - "If you are a ham, the WORLD IS YOUR FRIEND."
The message came in a burst of clarity, and I had no doubt, as my eyes filled up and my throat closed. I knew right then and there that ham radio needed me. I had been away too long. I had family... and friends... waiting.
6 August, 2018
Copyright © Virginia R. Smith