My heart had been broken... inconsolably. How could I ever fall in love with anyone else ever again? What could ever express that kind of longing, the deep need to be understood? to get through... to someone?
It was the spring of 1998 and I had cried for months. I needed something to feel happy about again. My favorite graduate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, Dr. Hall, was always talking about ham radio, every chance he got. He was a ham and a short wave listneer and had written a book about the Radio Canada International (He taught a whole class just on that!), and there was this movie he showed in my propaganda class where he pointed out a scene where a Candian radio operator in some remote territory was playing chess via radio... amateur radio. The whole scene was done accurately with call signs and proper protocol.
My paper for the class had been about radio Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion of August 1968 when Czechoslovak Radio was on the run, broadcasting from wherever they could. I think I got a B on the paper, but the subject matter had been so compelling that I didn't care. It was inspired by a book called
Then there was Josef Novak in the Czech Republic. He was this endearing little professor of Ivan's (By the way, Ivan was the Czech guy who had broken my heart.) I met Novak in the summer of 1997 when I was in Czechland visiting Ivan. Prof. Novak had written software to help people learn Morse code, which I had instantly found fascinating. He was a hamm like Dr. Hall, and he gave me his QSL card. (I still have it!)
I knew what it was becasue of Dr. Hall back in Mississippi... In fact, Dr. Hall met us in Prague that same summer (He and his wife were in Europe on vacation.) and we talked our way into Radio Free Europe for a tour, me and him and Ivan. Dr. Hall was nuts! I loved him for it.
At the end of that summer I came back to the US for my second year of grad school, and Ivan broke up with me,... via email a few days later! (Didn't see that coming!) It turned into the nine month long breakup.... from September to May, the whole school year! I cried and cried. Then one day I'd had enough!
So 1998 was the spring I decided to learn radio. I bought this book by Gordon West at Raido Shack, ... and I found software on the Internet, back when "Internet" was always capitalized. It was Morse Code software, kind of like Josef Novak's. I read my radio book and all kinds of stuff on how to learn Morse Code. There was an amateur radio license I could get where I didin't need to learn Morse Code, but for some reason I needed to learn it. Just the focus it took made me feel better. Radio, Morse Code... It all made me feel better. It still does.
I studied all summer, and I bought a radio from its original owner. I still have it, with the big glowing red digital display. It still has the best, warmest, clearest sound of any radio I have ever owned, and it glows like a holiday. Some nights in my dorm room I would turn it on and turn off all the lights, exept for the Christmas lights I had used to decorate a radio tower I had drawn on the wall with black electrical tape. I wasn't even sure what I was listening to half the time, but I just stuck a piece of wire in the antenna port and listened and felt better from the warmth of the lights. I didn't have a license yet, so I just listened. On Field Day in late June the amateur bands exploded to life. What a sound... thousands of voices from all over the country calling all at once. I just listened and felt better. I still love that radio... my Ten Tec Omni D. I'll keep it forever.
I had the perfect job. I sat at the desk in a residence hall all day waiting for conference guests to need things, so I sat and read textbooks from cover to cover getting ready for my comprehensive exams. I took my graduate comps in mid-June and was done with studying for school. So I then I would sit at the desk and read radio books the rest of the summer. I also practiced my Morse code sneding with a straight key and an oscilator. And I began a series of drawings inspired by my radio studies. I was already planning my QSL card!
I graduated with my masters in mass communication on August 7th and took my amatuer radio exam on August 8th, complete with Morse Code test. I ws pretty nervous, but I did very well. After I took 5 words per minute, they asked if I wanted to take my 13. I declined. I knew I wasn't ready for that. The writtem test was no problem and I was more proud of my new raido license than I was of my graduate degree! My new call sign was posted a few days later on the FCC database - KD5EZN.
In late August I made my very first contact on 40 meters... 7.114, Morse, with a ham in Pensacola (Orin N4ZMP), just like in the opening scene of Contact. I had seen that movie for the first time that summer, and Independence Day too... you know, Morse Code saves the world... again.
By fall I was back in Prague, on my own this time, doing some work at Radio Prague in the Czechoslovak Radio building, the one from the book I had read about the Soviet invasion in 1968! I was working there! And I went to the Czech national radio club... just walked in the door. I was barely a memeber of the American Radio Relay League back home, and here I was asking their Czech counterpart to help me get my Czech radio license. The president of the club took me to the Czech FCC and we got me a license. For five years after that I had a Czech call sign - OK8EZ. I was nuts, just like Dr. Hall. And based on how they acted, I was the first person who had ever done it!
I used to walk around Prague listening to the guys talking on the 2 meter repeaters. I never did have the guts to call anyone. My Czech was not too great, at least I didn't think so. I wish I had done more on the radio while I was there. The Czech Radio Club people were pretty nice, considering the cultural differences and language barrier. I came back to the states at the end of the year and met radio operators in Texas and Mississippi, and moved around so much that it was hard to ever have a good station. The antenna I worked my first DX with - from an apartment in Hattiesburg, MS - would make most ops cringe. It was truly terrible! I shudder just thinking about it!
I almost gave up on radio a couple times. Every few years I would move... one more time, and find my boxes of radio stuff and sigh and feel self-conscious. It was just that crazy thing I did to feel better when I had a broken heart all those tears ago. It was a silly fantasy... all my drawings of radio towers with Christmas lights on them, or the cartoon doodles of stacks of old radios and Morse keys. And it has taken me all this time to get to where I'm just starting to have the radio station I dreamed of back then, or the knowledge to be a good operator... or - more importantly - the friends. I even have a tower. It doen't have Christmas lights on it yet, but one day it will! (See the last item on the accompanying list.)
And though my haert still feels a little broken many nights when I sit by myself listening to the far away voices, I'm grateful that I never gave up on radio.
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