Staying in touch
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Left to right, Steve Duboff and his daughter, Lilly, learn from Frank D'Auria how to operate ham radio at the Green Mountain Wireless Society's ham radio event held at Rutland High School on Sunday. CASSANDRA HOTALING / RUTLAND HERALD |
Toolbox
By Josh O'Gorman STAFF WRITER - Published: June 29, 2009
Part public service but mostly good-old-fashioned fun, the Green Mountain Wireless Society took to the airwaves for Radio Days during the weekend at Rutland High School.
The group is one of many amateur radio clubs across North America who gathered Saturday and Sunday and set up equipment with the express intent of trying to reach as many others as possible.
The idea is to simulate a reaction to a situation in which communication infrastructure has been disabled — such as the ice storm that paralyzed Windham County in December — and establish contact with emergency services.
"We start with a barren space and we bring in the radios, the antennas, generators, everything we need," said John Gladding, president of GMWS, which temporarily turned the announcer's booth overlooking the football field into command center where five radio operators worked simultaneously.
The event also served as an open house to attract aspiring amateur radio operators. GMWS offers an eight-week course that will help a blossoming ham operator become licensed.
According to Gladding, there are about 700,000 amateur radio operators in the United States and about 3,000,000 worldwide, but the number of people involved in the activity is declining. Famous hams past and present include CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite, former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and guitarist Chet Atkins.
Inside the announcer's booth, four people scanned the dials of their radios listening for someone else calling out their combination of letters and numbers that identified their location. As they made contact, they briefly exchanged information and moved on, searching for another signal.
Ann Mary Rosenbrock operated a station for visitors who were either unlicensed or returning to the activity after a long absence. Although licensed since 2000, she has been interested in ham radio since the 1960s when she worked as a switchboard operator and would connect calls between a radio operator, who was in turn connecting with a soldier overseas and the soldier's family.
In a motor home outside the announcer's booth, Bert Morton was engaged in some communication work of his own, but instead of speaking, he exchanged information with a series of beeps.
For the last 55 years, Morton has been a continuous-wave radio operator and communicates with Morse code.
"I think we have a reputation for being strange," he said in between taps on a device that he uses to communicate as many as 40 words a minute. "We're geeks."
"The ultimate goal is to have fun," said Bob Pierattini, president of Addison County Amateur Radio Association, which conducted its own Radio Days event this weekend at Chimney Point State Historic Site in Addison. "The question we always get is, 'Why would you go through all this trouble if you can just pick up a phone?' If you ask that question you miss the point."
josh.ogorman@rutlandherald.com
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