Hello… Is This Thing On? Can Anybody Hear Me?

I woke up this morning thinking about ham radio.


When I was a kid there was a fat, smoking man who lived two blocks from my house. He would sometimes be out in his front yard, wearing a stained wifebeater t-shirt, ill-fitting shorts, and flip-flops over black socks, looking up.

He had an amazing array of antennae that spread out above his home like an aluminum firework. The grid work of bars loomed larger than the house and backyard combined, hovering about fifty feet in the air, with a three-rod support beam anchoring it into the side of his home.

The kids in the neighborhood claimed that he could talk to people in China, that he could hear transmissions from astronauts in orbit, and that he had friends all over the world. I found each claim progressively less believable than the previous one, but it did make me wonder.


So this morning, I was thinking about ham radio, and wondered if blogs are kind of the modern day equivalent.

It’s more efficient to be sure, I don’t have to broadcast all the time, I don’t have to leave the system up and turned on to hear if someone is trying to call out to me, but the principle is the same, sending out a message and see who responds from the faraway and wonder who might just be listening in...