by Jeff Newton

Created on: July 24, 2008

He was a man with white hair, he must've been in his sixties or so, old enough to remind me of my late grandfather. He told me, he had been a ham for over 50 years, I was amazed, because of the array of antenna's he had on top of his house - walking down the street with a police scanner in hand, he thought I was a ham or as they called them in the days of my young age, an Amatuer Radio Opertator. Nope, just a kid that kept the tabs on the "Pearl Street Blues" of the Eugene Police Department.

He invited me into his house, I saw an enormous set up of radio gear and computer equipment all connected to the wires of his "antenna farm" has we hams call it nowadays. I had always wondered early in those days how in the world a ham got its name, I knew it wasn't from a pig on the farm or from those at an auction house selling buttered ball hams for dinner!

I remember asking him what the computer was for? He said, "packet", this was my first exposure to the world of packet radio. It must've been around the late to mid 1970s, when this happened, I was intrigued and overwhelmed at what ham radio could do back than. No one ever took the time to explain it to mean or how packet radio even worked - If recall correctly at my age today? I think he was talking with a station in Cinncinati, Ohio.

I was stunned as frozen ape, that you'd could actually talk to another ham in another state and part of the county via radio and a computer, indeed the system still lives today in my 40s.

As a kid with a hearing impairment, I mustered for years to pass the Technician no code exam, which was actually the Novice license back than during my childhood.

In the February 2007, I had Cochlear Implant surgery on my right ear, it was a life altering decision, but it didn't stop me for becoming a ham, I had already been the "shadow" of another licensed hams within the Valley Radio Club of Oregon. I learned under the watchful eyes of experienced hams, that were willing to teach a new dog some old tricks about ham radio, six month later after I had my surgery, I got my ticket. It took me five years of mentoring and elmering for fellow hams and nearly 10 years to get that dang piece of paper to hang up on my wall in my office.

Its been a year since my surgery, life has changed so dramatically, that the sound of hearing and the patience of studing to be a ham paid off in the long run, as I near the one year anniversary of my ham radio career. Its not only interests me more, but keeps me involved with the

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