Hams Helping Hams
This column has started has discussing different organizations that encourage hams to get out and operate portable. We will continue that theme in a couple months, but something has come up to make me pause and reflect on another aspect of amateur radio for this month. This is the part of the hobby where hams help other hams. At least twice a year the Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society sponsors one-or-two-day programs to help other hams either obtain of upgrade their ham licenses. The instructors spend their own time and sometimes their own money to help license other hams.
Some hams arise early out of bed on a weekend morning to travel some distance to provide communications to ensure runners or bicyclists arrive to the end of the race on time
Others hold workshops to teach other hams something new. The GARS Workshop is one of the best things ever to happen in the club.
Some hams help others in more personal ways. A more experienced ham helps program a radio for a new ham. One or two hams provide rides to club meetings to other hams who couldn’t get there on their own.
I would like to tell you of hams who truly have heled me. As a new ham at his first club meeting, I was given ideas on what to buy for my first radio.
My G5RV antenna came down for two weeks. A ham from a local club spent several hours over two days to help me get my antenna back up. This was not a job I could have done myself. I needed a person with a launcher and higher skills than I had. He came twice, and he was so patient with the problems we had, hitting or missing the trees we were aiming for. Wires became entangled in satellite antennas, branches, and just about anything they could. It took about five hours over two separate days to complete the project, yet he persisted until the job was complete.
Why do hams all around the world perform acts of public service for each other? Unless it was a business deal, ham radio operators don’t charge each other. I think there is a comradely among fellow ham radio operators that does not exist in the population at large, that of giving to one’s fellow man (or woman).
With the Christmas season right around the corner, perhaps we would all do something for someone else, whether they are ham radio operators or not, the world would be just a little better if we all did it.
Happy Holidays from KJ4CMY