[SFDXA] Fw: NYTimes.com Article: Ham Radio Operators Connected the World (and Still Do)

[william greeson]

Nice article.
73, Ernie



This is from the Sunday NY Times - Thought you would be interested Rich -
WA2MNR

 rgrover@bankofny.com

 Ham Radio Operators Connected the World (and Still Do)

 May 4, 2003
 By JULIE SALAMON






 DANNY Gregory and Paul Sahre may have been particularly
 susceptible to the the lure of ham radio. Mr. Gregory, 42,
 was tuned in to the Internet almost 20 years ago, when it
 was a mysterious closed community; Mr. Sahre, 38, has the
 nose cone from a Nike-Ajax surface-to-air missile on
 display in his graphic design studio. They understand the
 romance of the geek.

 So it's probably not surprising they would feel a
 connection with Jerry Powell, an aeronautical engineer who
 talked to the world from his basement in Hackensack, N.J.
 For 70 years, until his death two years ago, and long after
 the Internet became commonplace, Mr. Powell systematically
 and compulsively made contact with other ham radio
 operators in at least 151 countries. After a conversation,
 many of them would send Mr. Powell what was known as a QSL
 card, QSL being the Morse Code shorthand for making contact
 with someone. Some were quirky, others artistic, others
 generic, but all served as concrete proof of an ephemeral
 meeting.

 It was the cards that led Mr. Gregory and Mr. Sahre to
 Jerry Powell, and to their book, "Hello World: A Life in
 Ham Radio," published this month by Princeton Architectural
 Press. Mr. Gregory, who lives in Greenwich Village, noticed
 a thick album lying open on a folding table near the
 entrance of the Sixth Avenue flea market just over a year
 ago. Mr. Gregory didn't know what the brightly colored
 cards inside were, but he wanted them, badly. After buying
 the album and taking it home, he went on the Internet and
 learned what he had: a collection of 369 QSL cards.

 Mr. Gregory, who is chief creative officer at Doremus
 advertising, showed the cards to his friend Mr. Sahre, who
 has designed book jackets. Mr. Sahre's reaction to these
 arcane objects - some of them quite beautiful, others
 beautifully strange - was immediate. "My first instinct
 was, this is a book," he said.

 Initially, he saw it as a reference-style book that would
 appeal to other graphic designers. "There are books about
 board games, match-box covers and snow globes," he said.
 "We're always looking at a drawing or typeface or
 photograph we can use.'`

 But as the two men discussed the cards, and became curious
 about the man who received them, they became fascinated by
 ham radio - an arcane but still thriving hobby, with about
 675,000 operators in the United States and more than 2.5
 million worldwide. Tens of thousands of them will gather in
 Dayton, Ohio, this month for an annual "hamvention." "We
 wanted to tap into the idea of someone being obsessed with
 this wacky thing no one else knows about," said Mr. Sahre.

 As Mr. Sahre began imagining what a book might look like,
 Mr. Gregory began tracking down the people who sent Mr.
 Powell cards. He got in touch with the daughter of an
 operator from Chile, and learned about a prince in Kuwait
 whom Mr. Powell had contacted during the first Gulf War. He
 talked to Yan Bambang Susanto, who lives in Surabaya,
 Indonesia's second largest city, about his contact with Mr.
 Powell.

 Mr. Gregory also realized, from newspaper clippings he
 found in the album, that Mr. Powell routinely used news
 stories to target prospective contacts: he wanted to meet
 people where things were happening. Following this example,
 Mr. Gregory began using the cards - which contain dates as
 well as locations - to learn about history and geography in
 a new way.

 He discovered that Prince Patrick Island in the Arctic
 Ocean was found in 1853 and named for Queen Victoria's
 third son. He learned about Father Marshall Moran, a Jesuit
 priest and missionary in Nepal, who was an ardent ham radio
 operator for 40 years. He found that King Hussein of
 Jordan, Marlon Brando and Priscilla Presley were ham
 operators.

 "I wish I'd met the guy," Mr. Gregory said of Jerry Powell.
 "He was able to go behind the Iron Curtain to talk to
 Russians at a time there's no other way a Westerner could
 have had that kind of contact. Just sitting in his
 basement, he had so much experience. And it was all so
 human. It wasn't like reading books, which is how I learn
 about stuff. He actually spoke to people one on one, to
 learn about the world."

 It's understandable that Mr. Gregory would feel drawn to
 the implicit yearning in all those contacts. His
 grandparents moved to Pakistan as Jewish refugees from
 Germany in the 1930's. His mother went to school in
 England, Mr. Gregory's place of birth. Before he was 13, he
 lived in Pakistan five times, in Australia for four years,
 and in Israel for three years. Along the way his mother
 divorced his father and married two more times, finally
 settling with Mr. Gregory and one of his stepfathers in
 Brooklyn. "We were adventuresome," Mr. Gregory said.

 Mr. Sahre's history produced another kind of connection.
 His father, like Mr. Powell, was an aerospace engineer, and
 a collector; he has 10 books of pictures he ripped out of
 sports magazines and sent to athletes to have them
 autographed. Mr. Sahre's grandfather was a ham radio
 operator in upstate New York.

 Eventually, Mr. Gregory and Mr. Sahre became so involved
 that they decided to become licensed ham radio operators.
 This was no small commitment. Unlike the Internet, which is
 available to almost anyone who can turn on a computer,
 amateur radio isn't easy to use. It requires proficiency, a
 federal license, a special vocabulary and adherence to
 protocol. The original amateur's code, written in 1928,
 decreed that ham operators should be considerate, loyal,
 progressive, friendly, balanced and patriotic. In other
 words, no porn sites allowed.

 It's also public, an audible chat room with open entry.
 When a ham operator speaks, anyone tuning in can listen.
 And serious ham radio operators regard themselves as a
 quasi-governmental force, on call for emergencies. After
 the attacks on the World Trade Center, a group of them went
 to ground zero to help coordinate communication between the
 fire department, the police and the national guard, who
 were all on different radio frequencies.

 The book Mr. Sahre and Mr. Gregory have produced has the
 eloquent design of a striking coffee table book, but it is
 also rich with scientific, historic and geographic
 information. There is conventional biographical detail
 about Jerry Powell - he grew up on a farm in Kansas, he
 worked for Bendix, he married a woman named Mabel. But this
 oddly poignant book captures another aspect of Mr. Powell
 and others like him, obsessive people with hidden selves,
 who exist somewhat apart from ordinary life, yet are eager
 to say hello to the world.



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/arts/television/04SALA.html?ex=1053073378&
ei=1&en=39fd617ca627f5f2