Story from G4JMM/6Y5

When I was 11 years old (in early 1972), I walked into the garage at home, and found that my dad, (who had no interest in ham radio or electronics), was dismantling an old radio with tubes in it. (EF80, ECH81 and the like). He was just collecting the nuts, bolts and aluminium (that's how they spell it in UK!). I started asking him about how radio worked, and he told me what he knew, (not much!).

The next birthday I was given an electronics experiment kit. The next Christmas I found an electronics toolkit under the tree.

All our neighbours got to hear about my interest in radio & electronics, and one of them brought round an old radio covering "Long Wave and Medium Wave", hoping that I could repair it. It wasn't a difficult repair: The waxed string from the tuning knob to the variable capacitor and to the scale pointer had broken. Not even anything to do with electronics or radio, really. But then the fun started:...

I replaced the string, worked out how many turns to put round the capstan, and how tight the spring should be. Then, not having a signal generator, I tried to calibrate the sliding pointer against known stations on Medium Wave. Starting off at the high frequency end of medium wave, I tuned in the first station I found, and was amazed to hear the person talking about street names which I recognised in our neighbourhood. That was strange: We didn't have a broadcast station covering our town.

I called my father, he made a phone call or two, and came back with the answer that this was local Radio Amateurs talking to each other on "Top Band". I showed some interest, and a week later, I received a copy of the RSGB Radio Communication Handbook through the mail, plus a contact name for the local Amateur Radio club.

The rest is history, as they say... I guess that answers 'how', not 'why', but thought you might be interested.

It turns out that the knowledge gained through Amateur Radio helped me immensely. I ended up taking up telecommunications as a profession, and am still in the same business. Retrospectively, that is probably the answer to 'why'.

The hobby has always been fascinating to me. One of my most memorable moments was helping to save the life of a critically injured sailor at sea.

- Iain, G4JMM/6Y5 (Kingston, Jamaica)