When I received my General class license in the spring of 2018, my wife was bewildered by the amount of time I spent at the radio. After looking at my log recently however, I discovered that I only logged 61 contacts during those first 30 days. In my defense, I was still learning how to do EVERYTHING, except the talking. I had that part down cold. The rest took a little while to master. At the time of this posting, I have over thirteen-thousand contacts, the majority using CW.
During my first four years in the Air Force, my operational specialty was Ground Radio Operations. At the two stations I worked at, the job was to take traffic from US Military aircraft, get off the frequency and pass that traffic down the line. Rag-chewing was not a thing in that world. I got a little casual with a flight crew on one occasion, and was highly encouraged to never do that again.
Fast-forward back to 2018; I’m licensed, I’m equipped, and there are State QSO parties on all of the bands for the entire summer. Call a station, say 59 Kansas, and move on. My kind of contact. Answer a CQ from a station overseas, and the conversation moves just as fast.
By the end of that first summer on HF and listening to all of my bragging about all of the contacts I’ve been making, my wife asks me “So what do you guys talk about anyway?” This was definitely one of those rare times when I was caught searching for an answer. “Well honey, not very much,” was all I could muster at first. I related the kind of operating I was initially trained to do and that chit-chat wasn’t really my jam. She quickly came back with “So what’s the point then?” Hmmm, how to answer that one.
I will tell you that when I jumped into HF, my expectations for tons of contacts and global reach were very low. In the Air Force, money was no object when it came to equipment. At the station I worked at in Sacramento in the early 80’s, our transmitters and their antennas were 30 miles away in one direction. Our receivers and their antennas were 30 miles in the other direction. We operated everything remotely over microwave links and had many kilowatts and directional antennas at our disposal. In the first iteration of my HAM shack, I had a 100 watt transceiver and a dipole antenna cut for 20 meters. How much fun could this be? As it turns out, fun fun fun, every time I turned the radio on.
In the end, my explanation to my wife was built around the idea that it is all in the chase. Every contact I make is a surprise to me. That I’ve made confirmed contacts with HAMs in over 170 other countries continues to blow my mind. Since I’ve transitioned to mostly CW operating the magic is even greater. Heck, I’ve got contacts with stations over ten-thousand miles away! Seriously?
There are HAMs everywhere who enjoy a good ragchew. I’m just not one of them. Don’t ask me why, you may not get a very coherent answer.