And good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome,
welcome. It is time now for our community connection right here on K one,
the one that you trust, and we're gonna be hamming it up a
little bit out. Did I say I knew I was going to do that.
I'm sorry, but we have Paul ready in here and he's vice presidents
here with the local HAM radio at Bartsville Amateur Radio Club. How are you
doing? First of all, doing good? Tom? Well, you know,
you know, we got this broadcast stuff here. That HAM stuff is
really pretty good though. Yeah, I love that stuff. Some guys have
us set up almost just like this, big microphones and everything they can.
Really I think it's big. Hey, I gotta tell you this is one
thing that I was telling you earlier that I came to know a little bit
about it back in the late seventies early eighties, and some fellas had some
HAM equipment. They said, he got to come out to the house and
check this out. Like by golly, right there on the desktop, they
had everything they needed. They had the antenna up the side of the house
and they are broadcasting people all over the place. Where's the farthest you ever
yet Australia is probably the furthest that's like low over seventeen thousand miles. Wow,
that's it. That's quite a reach. Yeah. Now tell us what
does HAM stand for? Well, ham is kind of a term. I
kind of forget how it came about, but you know amateur radio and HAM
is kind of like hamming it up, So that's what. So people on
the radio were kind of hamming it up and they still do today. They
still do today. It's really amazing because before the Internet, this was like
the cool thing. This is how you talk to people from around the world.
Right. I got licensed in the early eighties. I was thirteen when
I got my first license. Wow. So we had to go down to
Oklahoma City to take a test and at that time we had Morse Code requirements,
so you had to do most code. Now since then, what are
the requirements now for HAM operators? Do you need to do? You need
that? You do not need Morse Code anymore? There are. They used
to have like five licenses now the down to three, the Technician, the
general, and the extra class. So you still have to have license license
and each UH license as you go up the ranks gives you more space and
more bandwidth to operate on. Very good, you know, I was.
I was telling Paul that it was the hurricanes really Implorida where I really got
to see how this really works. First of all, it's a lot of
fun. But second of all, when the stuff hits the fan, a
lot of people rely on you guys and gals who are Ham operators because sometimes
you're the only signal, You're the only communication going out right and down Louisiana.
It took a couple of days to get communication restored. So yeah,
so we're down there or people a HAM radio operature down there passing traffic from
the Red Cross and and so forth to you know, give our companies and
reports of damage in different areas and also welfare checks on people and things like
that. My goodness sakes, it comes into extra handy. Now we've got
a we got a pretty cool thing coming out what tomorrow, yep, what's
going on? Well tomorrow is what we call field Day and it's the fourth
Saturday of June, so this is the ninetieth annual Field Day, so it's
pretty cool. We will be out there at Johnstone Park. We're setting up
some radios and antennas and then about one o'clock in the afternoon, it's when
everything starts, and that's when everybody's when the radio waves get busy. There's
people calling people, and the idea is trying to make as many contacts as
you can in the next two days. Now we will be offering Saturday.
We won't be offering Sunday, Bill, Okay. So Saturday is going to
be a real good time for people young and old alike to come out and
witnesses. It's a lot of fun, it really is. Yeah, there's
there's a lot of youth in the program too. There's what they call youth
on the air, so there are youth on the air groups across the US
and across the world, so there's a lot of youth into it too.
My goodness sakes, now you're telling me. Yeah, Actually, he picked
up a signal on the little island of Fiji out in the middle of the
water, out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, that's kind of That
was a real surprise. It's one of those rare bands that opened up at
this time of year, and I was able to get that through and I
was like, wow, Fiji, it's hard enough to get to California.
Now there's something cool that HAM operators are doing right now. It almost sounds
like a contest where you're you're going to national parks and broadcasting kind of remotely.
Yeah. They actually started that in twenty seventeen as a year long contest,
so going on. Yeah and yeah, so it's like this is so
great, let's just keep it going. And they've taken all the like state
of the national parks and wildlife management areas and people just take their radios out
there. Each one is assigned a number, and so you could say I'm
at Park Kadesh, you know, went to before, and people track that
on a website. They can track all the parks that they've contacted, all
the parks that you've activated. They call it activating the park. And then
you just go out there and have fun and my contacts. Now it's not
as big a equipment load as it used to be. Used to take a
pretty good sized hunker, your desk, a little corner room in your house,
but the remote capability it kind of fits in a something about the size
of a like a suit. You have a small suitcase. Yeah, I've
got I've just got this one radio. Now that it's probably about eight inches
long, about three in four inches tall, three inches deep, like a
lunch box. Yea, yeah, you just throw it in your backpack and
throw an antenta in there. It actually has an antenna tuner in it,
so if you're frequent, if your antenna is not tuned quite where it needs
to be, it'll kind of account for that, and then people might contacts.
I talked to someone on a wire that's like I think the wires about
thirty two foot long. We had only five foot off the ground and the
radio is only putting out about three and a half wats And I contacted somebody
on that. You go, yeah, it was in a different space.
I forget the state now. But this morning I talked to see a Morse
code contact with a guy in Virginia at a park. Oh my, So
you know, this is some of the things you're gonna learn about Saturday at
Saturday at one at Johnstone Park and it's Ham Radio Field Day activation. And
it'd be nice because I know what's gonna happen. You're gonna have young and
old alike. You're gonna have youngsters going wow, look at that, wow,
listen to this, and then the ulsters are just gonna smile and say,
yeah, ain't that cool? Yeah I can I can always just see
that out there. Yeah. We've got a couple of guys that they're just
wizards at the Morse Code. So oh yeah, they can just listen to
They didn't have to write it down. They so it comes through so fast
they can just pick it out. Oh wow, that's amazing. I was
telling Paul that when I first became a broadcaster nineteen one hundred and seventy five,
boy, that sounds like a long time ago that broadcasters used to have
a license to broadcast, and you used to have to go to an FCC
field office and take a task to get certified. I did that. I
was I couldn't even drive a car. But a lot of that, some
of that stuff in the middle was things with Morse Code. Had know a
little bit about that, and we had to know a little bit more of
ship to shore radio than I could ever imagine. And then they made us
do sos with flags. And I'm thinking, I'm a radio guy. I'm
gonna be a cornball playing rock and roll music on the radio. What am
I gonna do with flags? I asked the fellow, I guess it's the
proper After it was over with, after the test, he said, I
you only missed one. I said, yeah, what's the business with the
flags? He says, the war? It just never got rid of that
part. But yours is quite different because it has things to do with frequency,
you know, in different ratios, and you know, phasings and things
like that, a lot of math. There's a lot of math into it.
If you you know, you can get it as deep as you want
to. So you know, if you don't want to do that, you
don't have to. But I'll be a surface guy. Right. You can
go buy a cheap radio and antenna. It's already been tuned and put on
the air, you know. But you know, the main thing is just
getting on the air and just using the radio, just having fun communicating with
people. Tell you what, Paul, We're gonna take a quick break for
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Home, seven ten Dewey Bartels Event. We'll walk through this together. Welcome
back to our community connection. We're talking to Paul Ready. He's a vice
president here with the Bartaswelle Amateur Radio Club. We're going to have the Ham
Radio Field Day activation at Johnstone Park and that'll be one o'clock tomorrow. Now,
in earlier before we got on the air, you kind of had a
real cool celebrity encounter on Ham Radio. Tell us about that. Yeah,
there was interestingly the last man standing, you know, Tim Allen. Yeah,
that they had featured a Hammer Radio station there on the set and sometimes
they had that in the show. And Tim Allen is actually licensed and when
he went and got his license, and that was a functioning hammerdio station.
So I thought that was a prop. No, it's not a prop,
not just a prop. It was actually a fresh deal. So when they
started, when they were about to end the show, they had about a
week long or look it over, a week long special event where they had
stations all across the US that if you made contact with them, you could
submit and get a card and they sent back a autograph photograph of the of
the crew and all the stations that you worked. And I was able to
work all of them except for the actual station on the studio. Oh but
it's pretty dark, good though. Yeah, And so that's cool. I've
got that photo at home. That is nice, really cool to see what
kind of funny you can have. And you can find out more about it.
So tell us once again about the big activation day tomorrow. Okay,
so a field day being down Johnstone Park at the pavilion further in, so
it's not the one and along the road by the way MCA, it's the
one further in and we'll be starting operations at one o'clock. Alrighty be there
and bring a friend because it's a lot of fun to share. Yeah,
all right, hey, thanks for being with us today. Well, by
the way, do you have a Facebook page or anything like that. Well,
our website's part of the Ville Amateur Radioclub dot com, so it's one
of the longest rails you'll ever type in. But if you just type in
Bartlesville Amateur Radio and search for it, you'll find find us and then from
there we've got links to Facebook page. Oh wonderful. Well, great,
Hey, thanks for taking time to visit with us today. I'm glad to
be here. Good luck tomorrow, and bring lots of water. It's gonna
be a little warm. Thank you.