THE HAM'S WIDE WORLD

[Music] Enrique Garcia checking to see if Lunch is ready it is Enrique lives in the quiet Harbor Town of inada on the baa California peninsula of Mexico he leaves his wholesale groceries heading [Music] home after a stop to see his friend Jose and to pick up a 6 [Music] lq6 one of these days he's going to move his antenna into the backyard Enrique is a ham an amateur radio operator even as I this is the shack Matt futterman 17 High School senior Matt is stringing up a new 40m inverted V here in Woodland Hills California under the screen and into the shack and the new antenna is ready for the test this is Mexico col x-ray echo2 for radio Hotel CQ [Music] Sharon latrail 26 single graduate of Arizona State math major Sharon's call is W7 DSW Phoenix the general manager of the Valley Ham Shack and secretary treasurer of vitronics is on her way to see an important client X2 R X2 R this is wb6 [Music] Baker R X2 RH xc2 RH this is wb6 kpn wiie Baker 6 King Peter Nancy the handle is mat wb6 calling X2 and standing by all wb6 kpn xc2 RH start this mat nice to hear you you're coming very strong here into enada so back to you wb6 kpn xc2 I missed uh your handle I wonder if you could give me your handle down there go ahead uh my name is Enrique Enrique well the same as Henry go ahead oh okay fine Enrique well I just put up a new antenna just put up a 40 m Inver V and uh it replaces the vertical I used to use on the ban I wonder if you can give me an S reading go ahead W6 kpnx okay man we have terrific signal into Mexico right now you're sign on 59 steady nice and clear no problem cing you I'm desting you with a swan and using a tri bander antenna what three bands does that Tri band antenna that you have cover go ahead uh well mted covers are from 10 15 20 and 40 MERS and U well I guess it's more than a tri bander now well I guess uh I guess this is the staple of ham radio person-to-person communication the excitement of entering your ham Shack and opening a window on the world yeah that's on the west coast of uh Baja isn't it go ahead and with nearly half a million amateur radio operators it's not surprising that these two haven't talked to each other before I think I've located it on the map 3 G I think it's about time that I uh get over to that field day site so I'm wondering if uh possibly you'll be on at dinner time uh go ahead but also myself I have to go to work right now I'm also in a hurry and but I'll try to be after uh 6:30 or 7:00 after my work I'll see if I can make a contact with you so 73s AA manana wb6 kpn xc2 RH 73 and we'll see you later xc2 RH this is wb6 KPM xc2 r xc2 r in nanata this is W7 DSW Mobile in Phoenix Arizona do you have just one more minute uh yes go ahead thanks very much sometimes Enrique has trouble squeezing lunch into his lunchtime he's a popular guy with a good strong signal Matt's radio club is meeting on this hill surrounded by Suburbia to test their equipment in the field and make sure it's ready in case of emergency it's also a good warmup for a nationwide event called field day besides what's better fun for a Saturday afternoon I think that would be enough for now then if there's one thing you can be sure of it's the generator won't start the first time all [Music] right A lot of these young hams build their own equipment and they really do know what's going on inside this is the novice station the first step in amateur radio to help newcomers get on the air easily and master one of the federal requirements for a license the morse code this fairly accomplished beginner W6 qdq even fashioned his own bug by hooking two Army Surplus straight keys back to back the novice test with its simple requirements can can be given by any amiter who has progressed to the senior grades of licenses several of these young hams already have their amateur extraclass licenses allowing them full operating privileges on any of the dozen or so ham bands this is an antenna for the amateur 15 M BAND one of the several bands that we hams use to talk around the world one thing you can really be sure of when you're out in the field even in dry old Southern California is that it'll rain okay zls in Leonia Michigan this is W6 lxn portable 6 okay there is quite a bit of interference on your signal you're about Q4 and S7 here Q4 and S7 the location is Woodland Hills about miles Northwest of downtown Los Angeles on the west end of the San Fernando Valley my name is Matt Mexico Alpha Tango Tango Matt we're operating s of a field day type setup here portable setup with the West Valley amateur radio club we have about four station set up we're using a swan 350 to uh a 15 M portable quad up about uh 20 ft Two element quad Audi copy K8 zls in Leonia Michigan this is wa6 lxn portable 6 [Applause] [Music] Hill Cali well this outing is a real success if you don't mind the rain and they obviously don't now this is an actual field day when hams all over the North American continent once a year simultaneously fire up their emergency gear and test it w and if you think to yourself boy somebody has to organize all this you're right somebody does the American radio relay League W it's also a contest you try to talk to as many stations as possible in one weekend using only emergency power do well let's let's loosen the guyes and layer on during a real emergency the hours of preparation pay off and ham organizations like races the radio amateur civil emergency service really come into their own the fire is approaching malland Highway they are considering evacuation of Calabasas Highlands request they put three amateur units in the field to assist in the communications notify the van to this effect CPT to CPT mobile operations requesting three amateure mobile units be sent to the calabassas highlands area to provide Communications for evacuation this assign RoR Chief Communications officer CPT clear all right Zer get your units so I will set up the evacuation command post right Bill send Baker easy [Music] [Music] 66 brush and forest fires in Southern California are foreseeable planned for emergencies but most disasters defy planning here the Earth itself has moved dropping the ocean floor and then heaving it toward the surface creating a huge tidal wave and driving it toward the coast of Alaska in Valdes a ship has just docked it is Good Friday school is out and the pier is alive with kids and dogs among the workmen suddenly without warning most of the water drains from vald's Harbor a deep Chasm opens directly alongside the ship the dock splinters and disappears in the Rushing Water then the tidal wave hits earthquake tidal wave shock waves the most awesome Force to hit North America in the 20th century hitting Anchorage at 5:36 p.m. just after the close of business at 5:47 the first mobile units of the radio amateur civil emergency service swing into action ready to provide immediate Communications this is the strange calm that followed a new department store in down Downtown Anchorage yesterday this was an expensive neighborhood the airport control tower the story is repeated in Seward and Kodiak all over Alaska civil defense officials gather their shaken forces ham radio volunteers provide vital links in rescue Communications portable equipment is gathered into makeshift message centers to find the missing and speed help to where it's needed in the aftermath of the worst disaster in Alaskan history this is Bill Leonard reporting ever see an aluminum Christmas tree not like this one alred this ham station is world famous for relaying messages and traffic from overseas and it belongs to K7 ug handle Barry hello uh Mrs Martino yes uhhuh this is an amateur radio station in Arizona and we have your husband the captain on the other end of this hookup and I'd like to ask you have you ever talked before by amateur radio I sure have oh you have well that's wonderful we're always glad to hear that and you know the magic word over right don't forget it and the next voice that you hear will be that of Captain Martino ai8 Alpha Hotel this is AFA 7 ug ready to go and this here is the captain's Voice Hi over there and this uh it's Thursday morning over here in the 27th and uh who am I talking to H you're talking to me honey and it sounds wonderful to hear your voice we're just sitting here finishing dinner and uh are you in cck over I'm in cck I got back last Saturday Mona and uh I just want to tell you that on the 1st of May at about 10:00 I want to see know if you'll be there over I sure it'll be there that's for sure uh it won't be on the 30th then but I should be there the first of May I love you so much and we're so lonesome over I love you too darling have you got your little friend and how are they over here's Mara hi Dad over well most of the activities here at my hamshack outside Phoenix has been traffic in and out of Southeast Asia other state side hams have specialized in messages from other parts of the world for example let's take Antarctica since ham operations began in Little America thousands of phone patches have been completed now this is obviously summertime in the winter about all you can see is the top of the antenna and there are over a dozen Shacks down here serving a very important purpose morale kc4 USX this is k6 gjv in all hamard California okay Charlie Mrs Hamilton's on the phone she's talked on a phone patch before here in Los Angeles ready to talk to her son in in Little America so stand by down there in Little America kc4 USX this is k6 gjv Hamra California USX Little America fine John you're coming through great down here today and we'll be ready to go in about 5 Seconds one of the stations down here even built what looks like an isolation Booth so the on theair conversation would seem more private and more personal ham radio is the only person-to-person link between the Antarctic crew and families and relatives back home making life on the ice less lonely and I'd say that's quite an accomplishment for a bunch of volunteers just enjoying their hobby here in uh AFA 7 ug we have 25 volunteers who have been working this station since September of 1967 right around the clock 7 days a week and they do a bang up job you might get the idea that all messages are handled by voice Transmissions but that's far from being the case Morris code is still the most efficient way to get a message from one place to another now here's one of the top traffic handlers in the whole world wb6 bbo Louise is a longtime member of a very exclusive group you have to send and receive a lot of messages to belong to the Brass Pounders league and you've got to keep it up every day every week and every month you know radio's become so much a part of our everyday life that we're prone to think it's been here forever it's sort of like taxes I got an interest in amateur radio at a very early age in fact I got my first license when I was 13 in 1922 6 BPI but it isn't even 100 years since Marone first sent messages by Wireless 1896 was that big GE within a few years nameless Pioneers with their ultramodern one tube receivers were tuning 200 M and down hoping to hear anything and if everything worked they heard it this thing is aptly named a spark gap transmitter it sent out a radio wave and a sound wave too and if you weren't careful you'd get hit in the head with a spark this is one you could hear a block away and we used to bury them in the backyard to keep the noise down during the first world war ham operations ceased and more than 4,000 of them were pressed into Service as Signal Court technicians and operators and it was during this period in 1914 that ham radio was to form its official organization under the guidance of this man hirum Percy Maxim 1 aw he founded the American radio relay League then as today the organization of by and for the radio amateur after the war Harum Percy Maxim had to fight with Washington to get amateur radio going again but fight he did and he won an incredible New Era of Discovery was launched before long ham radio was being sent on Expeditions including several to the Arctic forerunners of those in Little America and this is K7 XI a real rare one the experiments continued and the fact is that nearly every major electronic Discovery in those early days was made by a ham tinkering around giving the impossible one more try all over the world h hams kept building better more sensitive higher powerered gear with bigger antennas to trap that elusive station on creep or Andora or new guini or for some Cleveland they had a standard piece of advice for each other if your antenna didn't blow down last winter it wasn't big enough amateur radio has come a long long way but it wasn't so long ago that some of us can't remember it a practice started about that time continues today the exchanging of these we call them qsl cards and they are a reminder and a record of the contact some hams have cards from well over 300 different countries but I think one of the most interesting ones that I have is from K4 Li and the handle there is Arthur thanks Barry and I want to say that's some operation you've got out there but speaking of qsls how's this for a paradise vk4 oof Brisbane Australia it's pretty easy to spot a Ham's house it's right under one of these Ken here might be talking with somebody across the street or across the ocean like maybe yv1 n in maraio Venezuela looks like almost as much gear as Barry huh not to mention the antenna Farm to go with her I wonder how Jose's wife likes that barber pole in the front yard oh well Venezuela's full of hams of course at least compared to fit Karen Island a thousand miles from anywhere and except for a few houses not much different than when Fletcher Christian first set foot on it in 1790 his boat dropped anchor right here in Bounty Bay but nowadays the mailboat puts in here once a month population 99 and one ham if you're looking for new countries to talk to boy this one is a real find VR6 TC as in Tom Christian great great great great grandson of old Fletcher now here's another rare guy W4 BPD Gus's idea of a good time is to set up his gear on an island somewhere and really ham it up like here in the middle of the Arabian Sea he's a real hero to DX chases see the antenna on top of that castle that's Gus in San Marino there isn't a corner of the world where you can't find a ham yep they even got one in the palace here at gang talk sikim and look at this view through the trees and antennas in the backyard that's Mount Everest yes sir you'll find ham antenna everywhere here's one on the front lawn of a Las Vegas hotel inside a convention a hamfest a chance to put some faces on some familiar voices over a thousand hams at this one from all over as you can [Music] see room for a kilowatt rig in here let me tell you about this a bunch of imaginative hams figured it'd be fun to have an amateur radio satellite well they built it called it Oscar short for orbiting satellite carrying amateur radio wangled a ride into space for it and it worked great we've had several up there already and more to come this thing is unique but it's only one of thousands of ham experiments surprised to find ham teletype H one ham even converted his to print out in in Braille this is Tom O'Hara W6 o RG since Ham's played a big part in the development of Television it shouldn't be any surprise that they're still fooling with it some of them are even sending TV type pictures to the South Pole showing you a little bit of video over here in the shack w6a yeah real fine Rudy let's take a look uh see that Echo making uh tape recorder yours uh W6 PX w6g yeah real fine Tom w6g this is [Music] W6 West yeah Tom uh wonder how you coming along with the rig for the Rose Parade W6 RG this is w6x audio and video okay that should be coming in on you there I'll uh try and zoom in on this thing I got the bread board here and uh it's all clued up it seems to work and it's about five Watts that's about it Ry it's about 10 in long and a couple of good high power transistors and uh I think it'll put out a good picture in the sheriff's helicopter for us there New Year's so that I got to get back to it Rudy I got swing some more solder on this thing and uh nice seeing you again on there Rudy and we'll check with you later W6 epx w6g 73 Tom we'll see you WG this is w6x West Tom here is a real experiment and a builder most of his equipment is home brew here he's finishing a transistorized television transmitter and that's the whole thing right there one of the few places with more construction projects than Tom is the experimental Lab at the American radio relay League headquarters and they'll try anything if that antenna works I'll Keel over that's better one of the regular beams at W1 aw World ham headquarters ARRL Newington Connecticut this gadget sends out Morse code for practice so newcomers and novices can build up their speed and in addition code classes are held regularly at schools and clubs such as the talut mountain Science Center this classroom type instruction really does the job when it's backed up by Code Practice transmitted by W1 aw with all this help available it's really pretty easy to become a ham these days and that's the way it should be so before I say so long and 73s let me pass along my traffic these young people are having a ball because amateur radio is a tremendous hobby great fun and a service to your fellow man and that's a really winning combination right so this is K4 Li 73 is this frequency in use X2 RH X2 RH X2 R this is wb6 are you around Enrique go ahead and NADA uh good afternoon Matt nice to hear you I've been listening for you and fortunately I was able to pick you up and uh please tell me how you came out with the club meeting so back to you wb6 kpn [Music] very good Jack it's it's quite a long time since we uh since we did have AIT of a chat together just the same way isn't it right your weather there 65° J but at the moment over here it's raining it has been show all day and very very windy Jak very very windy 40 or 50 mph wind here but they could get a lot more than this they could get a lot more [Music] here the hd44 the [Music] che