{"id":16,"date":"2020-09-22T04:59:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-22T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/?p=16"},"modified":"2020-10-10T05:00:19","modified_gmt":"2020-10-10T05:00:19","slug":"20-year-hiatus-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/?p=16","title":{"rendered":"20-year hiatus (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I know this is a compelling story, so sit back, we\u2019re only 1\/3 of the way through it, I suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father a couple of friends who joined into our sessions, despite my dad thinking we could just chat all day without interruption.  That\u2019s not really how ham radio works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One friend of my father\u2019s, 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 \u2018straw\u2019 that he alternately sucked and blew to articulate the dits and dahs.  But most of the time he would join in our SSB conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, another regular, although a guy I never met, was Jim (NM8X). He was a seasons ham with an extra callsign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the little group, I think Jim and I are the only ones left, everyone else has gone silent key (SK).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left San Angelo and spent the next three years in Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Hawaii, I was sent to Omaha (where I remain today).  Although I didn\u2019t know it, my time in the military was drawing to an end, but not quite yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to blend in with the local hams. I went to some in-person meets at local restaurants like Denny\u2019s in Bellevue and Hardy\u2019s in Plattsmouth. I never did feel very welcome on 2 meters and, honestly, didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t even notice that it\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know this is a compelling story, so sit back, we\u2019re only 1\/3 of the way through it, I suspect. After Misawa, I was back in San Angelo, Texas for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","anons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/straightkey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}