I know this is a compelling story, so sit back, we’re only 1/3 of the way through it, I suspect.
After Misawa, I was back in San Angelo, Texas for more training. This time it was a little more permanent and I spent 6 months there working 10m DX primarily on my Radio Shack HTX-100. I loved that little rig. It had two power modes, 5 watts, and 25 watts, and I could operate it in the car with a homemade CW key (it was nothing more than a little rocker switch bought at Radio Shack for around a dollar. Super easy to make and super easy to replace when it broke.
Finally, after several years, I was able to make contact with my father over the amateur radio frequencies. We started having regular QSO sessions on 10 meters, mostly using SSB mode but occasionally with CW.
My father a couple of friends who joined into our sessions, despite my dad thinking we could just chat all day without interruption. That’s not really how ham radio works.
One friend of my father’s, named George – N8NJO, was a regular member of our little QSO party. George was a quadriplegic ham who had learned Morse code and who could send code fairly well using a specialized ‘straw’ that he alternately sucked and blew to articulate the dits and dahs. But most of the time he would join in our SSB conversations.
There was another fella named Sam who was living in San Angelo. His callsign was KA5OAI. He was a semi-regular on our little net and I got to visit him at his house once or twice.
Finally, another regular, although a guy I never met, was Jim (NM8X). He was a seasons ham with an extra callsign.
Of the little group, I think Jim and I are the only ones left, everyone else has gone silent key (SK).
I left San Angelo and spent the next three years in Hawaii.
Hawaii was a great place to live so long as you had free military housing; but, once again, I was fighting the Navy for permission to erect an antenna. I have little memory of my time there and/or my ham activity. I did meet some folks and make some friends with other military hams, but, by and large, it was fairly uneventful. Any ham radio activity I did was mobile or using hastily erected, temporary dipole antenna that I could rip down if anyone was looking.
After Hawaii, I was sent to Omaha (where I remain today). Although I didn’t know it, my time in the military was drawing to an end, but not quite yet.
I tried to blend in with the local hams. I went to some in-person meets at local restaurants like Denny’s in Bellevue and Hardy’s in Plattsmouth. I never did feel very welcome on 2 meters and, honestly, didn’t feel like I fit in with the crowd of mostly older, retired military guys. Of course, I was still in my early-mid 30s at that point and significantly younger than most of the older timers.
I kept on doing a little HF but not very much. Life has a way of taking over and pointing you in another direction. Sometimes you don’t even notice that it’s happening.