Exploring Ham Radio
Ward Silver, N0AX, in the Contester's Rate Sheet, offered up a pretty good point on what we are doing in the hobby:
What I've found is that the longer a ham has been licensed, the FEWER different aspects of ham radio they are likely to use. We are creatures of habit and once formed, we tend to pertinaciously follow those habits, frequently becoming incredibly deep experts to be sure, growing narrower, relatively speaking. It is rare individual that can lay claim to being a Renaissance Ham.As we develop and hone our expertise, we may also find that we have explored much of what there is to explore in our chosen niches. Our hamming begins to become permeated with a sameness that leads to a quietus of "been there, done that". Does this stoic inertia sound familiar?
Indeed, it does. One of the great aspects of this hobby is the tremendous diversity of subjects that can be learned, practiced, and shared within the hobby itself.I've always made it a consistent action on my part that when I move, I try to do one new thing in the hobby that I haven't done before. This has resulted in rag chewing, DXing, contesting from home, packet radio and DX spotting, multi-contesting, and DXpeditioning.But this move to this house has resulting in not doing something new in the hobby. And part of what that has meant is that I don't have a station up and working right now -- any antenna would have half its signal hit the earth, so why is it worth it?Well, it is. I chose to live in this house for very good reasons, completely understanding the challenge of ham radio from this location (both the house and the Pacific Northwest).So in a couple of weeks after Kate and I return from EI-land, I'm going to figure out how to get a station up on the air. I haven't done much with PSK or the other exotic digital modes and, given my half-earth ground plane, I think a concentrated signal would help a lot.I'm not going to with the ARRL CW contest from home -- that much is for sure.But there is more to the hobby than each of our cherished portions of ham radio.Time to do a bit of exploring.Scot, K9JY