Ham radio opens a connection to the world

The Mount Vernon Amateur Radio Club (MVARC) opened their doors to the public on Saturday, March 7, in the Old Academy Building at 790 Fairgrounds Road. Their open house was an opportunity to view demonstrations of modern ham radio and its applications in the world of hi-tech.

On display were modern digital transceivers. Some were very small, but powerful. There were demonstrations of VHF, UHF, and Shortwave radios.

There were some Ohio-made Drake brand radios along with some other American radios. Some brands, like Drake, are no longer manufactured, but are sought after none the less.

Also on display was a working echolink phone patch, where one can take their cellphone, log into the Internet and into a computer, which is hooked to a radio. The radio can transmit to a dedicated radio transceiver, set to a certain frequency, called a repeater. In that way, one can talk over a repeater, using a telephone.

Don Russell, one time president of the MVARC, is still a ham at age 76. He was on hand to talk about his favorite subject — radio. Decades of being on the air has left him with a lifetime of stories to share. Of course, just about all of his stories seem to include a radio, "I was a short wave listener for five years before I got my ham license. Everybody talks about how expensive ham radio is, but you can get a good receiver for about three or $400. And I ask, can you buy a used dragstrip car for that?"

“I got my license at 15,” recalled Russell. “I had a friend who liked morse code and the club did a field day contest, back in the 60s. I wasn't really good in morse code. This friend, set up the (radio) camp and did morse code all night long. I sat there and listened to him all night. I kept thinking, ‘This is really cool.’ I didn't understand most of it. I've been at the club since 1965. I took the radio class back in 1964. I got my beginners license, so I was a really young member of the club."

Russell, in his mid-teens during the mid-60s, turned on his radio, one day, and found a friend.

"We've met each other in high school over ham radio,” said Russell. “I don't know how we ran into each other. We just started talking one afternoon, after school. He was in high school in a town really close to Monroeville. I don't know why, but we just kind of got along. So, every afternoon, when we got off school, we would want to talk until (our parents) called us for dinner. We would talk on the weekends. He was going into the Navy. He flunked the physical, so it took him a while, but he did get there. He did phone patches overseas for stateside families (while in the Navy). He did that for his whole Navy career. He was hoping to get out on the seas, but I don't think he ever left Hawaii. That was about 1968 or 69. We kind of lost track of each other, after that.”

Eventually, they would find each other again.

“Then, (years later) I was doing this (ham radio) contest,” explained Russell. “I was talking on the radio, and all of a sudden, this fellow came on and I didn't recognize his voice. We made contact and went away. Then he came back and said, ‘Are you Don Russell from Mount Vernon, Ohio?’ I said, 'Yeah.' Then, he said, "Yeah we used to talk when we were in high school.” I knew who he was. Then, we started talking every week, for about four or five years. Now, we're just kind of taking a break, but we will get back to it."

In the 60s, there were many young radio enthusiasts entering ham radio.

“During that time, there was a group of four stations, besides my friend and I,” said Russell. “One of them was a high school station in Michigan. There was also one in Indiana, one in Illinois, and, I think, one in Pennsylvania. These were made up of high school kids, who had studied short wave radio, and their high school let them set up a radio station at the school. They started joining us and we were talking for hours. For me, that was probably the best part of ham radio was just having four or five friends, that you got on the radio and would talk with you every day, even weekends.”

Like many young people, Russell had caught the ham radio bug.

“We have an award that you could get from one of those ham radio magazines, if you would talk to somebody for six hours straight, I don't mean just weather and stuff. I mean, just talk to them. Each of us, took each one individually and did this. That way we could get our rewards. It's hard to come up with stuff to talk about, but it was fun.”

He was briefly president of the club in 1970.

"Then, In 1976, my brother and I started teaching ham radio through the club,” said Russell. “So, we were the instructors. We did that for several years, and then gave it up. In 1990, I started it back up and I taught ham radio for the club for about 10 years. Of course, I had a lot of help. I wasn't about to do it all by myself. I had volunteers and we would share the responsibility of teaching ham radio.”

Over 60 years as a ham radio enthusiast has given Russell a lifetime of memories.

“It’s been a variety of enjoyment,” said Russell. “In the 60s, when I started out, I was reading a magazine article about bouncing radio signals off the moon and back. Back then, it took huge, directional antennas — perhaps eight or ten antennas — put together, pointing at the moon. I saw that and I said, 'I want to do that one of these days.' Finally, when I retired (about 2016), I decided that I was going to do this. By then, the technology had advanced so much, that I could do it with two very big antennas, rather than 10. Well, I did it. So, I spent a year or so, bouncing signals off the moon. Probably there are less than 1000 people that did that out of all the people on earth. I did it. It was fun. Ham radio is something where you read about somebody trying something, somewhere. The next thing you know, you want to try it.”

Ham radio fits neatly into the modern technological world and is less vulnerable to outages than cellular technology.

“Ham radio is an exciting hobby,” said Russell. “I don't understand why more kids don't get interested in it. I know they have their cell phones and stuff, but (cellphones) are not talking to someone directly. When we (hams) do it, We are putting RF over atmosphere and talking to somebody on the other side. We're not going through a cell tower. Cellular service goes down. We don't have that problem. I think it was back in the early 1980s in Mount Vernon, when they were digging up Mulberry Street and they cut some telephone lines. We spent a week providing communications for the telephone company. It didn't cut out communications in all of Mount Vernon, but it cut out a significant portion of it. We actually supported the workers that were working on the lines.”

For information on classes in ham radio and morse code, please visit the Mount Vernon Amateur Radio Club’s website at https://mvarc.net/.

MVARC meets every second Monday of the month at 790 Fairgrounds Road.