While I enjoy all the technology we get to play with as amateur radio operators, I enjoy just as much the people you meet on the bands. In the last week and a half, I’ve had three QSO that are worth blogging about.
- Carl, N1EVO. I worked Carl on August 25. He was running QRP, from his home in Fort Kent, ME, which is just south of the Quebec/Maine border. He mentioned that he was the manager of a small hotel on US 1, which is 2,390 miles long and runs from the Canadian border all the way down to Florida.
We had an interesting chat about managing the hotel during tourist season, and Carl said he would send me a QSL card and a “Mile 0” sticker. Yesterday, in the mail, I received his QSL card and two stickers. “Fort Kent,” he writes, “can be the end or the start of US 1.”
- Joe, KI4GAP. I worked Joe a couple of days ago. On his QRZ.Com page, he mentioned growing up in the suburbs of Detroit. I mentioned to him that I was an “east sider,” meaning that I grew up on the east side of Detroit. He also grew up on the east side of Detroit, and as it turns out, is the same age as I am. While it doesn’t appear that we knew each other way back when, we did have fun comparing notes.
Joe is now a staff photographer for a newspaper down in Virginia. he mentioned that he was being sent to the coast to take pictures of Hurricane Earl. Just now, I’m listening to a news report of the imminent landfall. Stay safe, Joe.
- Mark, VE3CPK. Last night, I had a nice long ragchew with Mark. Again, I pulled up Mark’s QRZ.Com page, which contained a link to another page with more info. As it turns out, Mark is the Vice President, Advanced Technology for Research in Motion Limited (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry. He is also 55, but has been a ham for 44 years!
You can bet that ham radio played a big part in Mark’s life and career. I told him that I thought hams should be doing more with microwave technology, and he readily agreed. Someone really needs to come up with a killer ham app for microwave systems and then build some radios to implement it. Why shouldn’t these radios be as common (at least among the ham community) as 2m HTs?
Leave a Reply