Ageless: Hobby in ham radio turns into a lifetime skill

Growing up in the 1940s and ’50s, I loved science toys like chemistry sets and telescopes, and especially kits to build anything electronic. I spent many delightful hours with my father at night basking in the glow of the vacuum tubes in his short-wave radio listening to police calls and far-away ham radio operators.

In 1959, at age 16, I got my first job delivering the Baltimore News Post to about 40 customers. One day when I stopped by to collect the monthly fee, I discovered that a customer was one of those ham operators. Norm Brooks was heavy, with a deep resonant voice. He asked me to accompany him to the basement and wait a few minutes and he would pay me. Since my salary came out of what I could collect, I followed him down the stairs.

As I stepped into the basement, my eyes locked in on the fanciest set of radio equipment I had ever seen. For an hour, I listened in awe and envy as he took control of the Maryland Emergency Phone Net for an emergency communications drill. When he finished and got up to pay me, I told him how much I enjoyed listening to hams and how thrilled I was to meet one in person. “Would you like to be a ham?” he asked. My life had just changed forever.

Brooks became my mentor, my “Elmer” as the hams say. With his encouragement, I studied hard. In 1960, I got my general class amateur license and had also learned enough to pass the Federal Communications Commission examinations for commercial radiotelegraph and radio telephone licenses. A senior in high school, I was licensed to be a radio operator at a broadcast station or aboard a ship on the high seas.

At the time, it was just a hobby to me — an exciting, thoroughly enjoyable hobby, but just a hobby. Within two years, it became a great deal more.

Although I was admitted to the Johns Hopkins University to study physics, my tenure there threatened to be short. Our family had money for only one semester and I had no scholarship.

One of my first-semester professors, Dr. George Benton, was looking for a technician to assist with measurements in the fluid dynamics laboratory. I approached him. He was impressed that my electronics background was extensive in theory and practice. Based on my FCC credentials and ham radio experience, he hired me.

For the next decade as I earned my bachelor’s in physics and my doctorate in earth and planetary sciences, I funded my Hopkins education through a series of increasingly responsible positions as a laboratory technician, all building on my ham radio skills.

After Hopkins, my hobby remained a major asset as my career in scientific research developed. My interests were in instrumentation and measurement. The electronic theory and practice from the hobby permeated my area of specialization at the Hurricane Research Division in Miami, where I developed or improved instrumentation for use on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “hurricane hunter” aircraft.

Later, I became an expert on atmospheric measurements in support of spaceflight operations with NASA at Kennedy Space Center.

As my career matured, I have been able to afford ham radio equipment of the quality I envied when I was young. I have used it to win several world championships in international amateur radio competition.

Over my lifetime, my hobby funded my education and enhanced my career. Now my career is enhancing my hobby. That seems uniquely appropriate to me.