New Year Ham Radio Resolutions

Lots of people make New Years resolutions today. Most of them will fail; some as soon as a mere ten days from now.

So I don't make New Years Resolutions.

What I do, instead, is consider what different things in my life have meaning. What I learned over the course of the year about the things that mean something to me.

And discard that which no longer has value to me.

Interestingly, Ham Radio has been with me since 1984 on a continuous basis and was with me even before that when I was briefly licensed in high school. It is the enduring aspects of the hobby that has kept its value with me.

My first exposure to Ham Radio was when I visited my high school classmate over at his house and marveled on how he could understand Morse code without writing anything down while chatting with another ham in Germany. It was the spark that started everything.

Morse code has been the foundation of the hobby for me -- not because it is some moral equivalent of passing some test as some purists would argue -- but because Morse code has always been music to me. I hear the dits and the dahs and they form musical words in my head.

I've worked many a DX station -- and lots of new ones -- using the melody in my head singing across the ionosphere to places far, far away.

But the value of the hobby to me is the varied aspects of the hobby that can take the best of us down the radio path in new and exciting ways.

For me, the first fascination was simply rag chewing with others. My first contact as a ham when I lived in Wisconsin was with a station in California. Not far, of course, in a relative sense. But to a youngster with a crystal rig, analog receiver and an antenna hanging off a country house roof, it was pretty far to me.

Then came DX. I worked about 50 countries as a novice, using crystals in a 50-watt transmitter and an antenna that would be merely poor to me today.

Then came being an officer in my local radio club (the Four Lakes Amateur Radio Club in Madison, WI that, at the time, had about 250 members and about 100 active members), including being President for two years. It was one of the most enjoyable times of my ham radio career.

After DX came packet radio where I was a node in the Midwest (as NB9C) connecting Wisconsin to Illinois just outside Milwaukee. I learned a lot of networking performing that function and worked a good bit of DX to boot.

Then came contesting. I liked the scheduling aspect of it. The competitiveness of it without the traffic cops and spoil sports of the DXpedition variety.

I also loved operating from big stations. There is great teamwork and camaraderie in working at big stations. Each person brings a different gift that makes the station as good as it is in a contest. There is contribution and excellence and friendship all at the same time in a great multi-op station.

Since moving to the Pacific Northwest, I've become more involved in contests by being DX rather than working the paltry signals received here.

But the fundamentals for me remain the same: Morse is music, teamwork is strong, contesting is like visiting hundreds of old friends in a brief exchange of hello, and performance still counts.

At the end of every year, the diversity of Ham Radio continues to call. One cannot get bored in this hobby -- there are simply too many different things that can be done with various segments of the hobby.

Consider what Ham Radio has meant to you this past year. Be grateful for those things and and continue to build on your friendships in the hobby.

Happy New Year.

Scot, K9JY