Recently, I became Twitter friends with a certain ham radio operator. She mentioned she was going to be attempting an upgrade of her license to General Class. I was excited to read that she recently passed her test and upgraded to the world of HF on ALL of the bands. We talked about having a QSO and that took place on 10/31/2009 on 20 meter SSB.
I'm talking about Kami, KF4UFY. It was obvious when she described her station that we would be able to work easily if there was propagation. She picked a frequency and I was happy to hear her voice. The bands were not quite open to the east coast but I had a good copy on Kami.
In this day of modern technology consisting of Twitter™, Facebook™, MySpace™, it's great to see a young person interested in ham radio! We need to do all we can to promote our hobby and show our younger generation that our hobby may be old but it has several modern elements as well. Just work a contest where an operator sends their age as part of the exchange. It will open your eyes to the average age of ham radio operators world wide. We need some young talent and interest in our hobby so that it maintains a bright future. I'm always reading about SK's (Silent Key's) in QST and in forums and we should also be announcing newcomers to our hobby as well.
Congratulations Kami on your upgrade and here's to wishing you the very best of experiences in ham radio! Keep getting on HF and making contacts! You sounded great and it was a pleasure to contact you. May DX fill your logbook and propagation be your friend in your many years to come in this great hobby.
Operating from Alaska was truly exciting and challenging as well. This CW and Digital operator is now surfing the waves of propagation from Massachusetts. The propagational adventure continues...
Hey Phil!
ReplyDeleteThis is Kami, KF4UFY. I wanted to tell you that I read this post for the first time yesterday and it made my day! I had no idea you had written this until I did a random google search of my callsign and it came up in the search engine. I remember my contact with you that day very well, being that it was my very first HF contact. Most people are not as lucky as me to have their first HF contact documented so well!
Thank you for the kind words. I am still enjoying ham radio! I haven't been active on anything but 2 meters in a long time, but I need to get back on HF. HF is fun.
I hope life is being good to you, and who knows, maybe we'll bump into each other on the bands again one day. Which, by the way, I checked out the pictures of the Northern Lights on your website and they are so beautiful.
Take care!
73 de KF4UFY
Kami, so glad you stopped by and I very much enjoyed our QSO! Ham radio is always there when you have time for it. Hopefully we can work again someday. All the best and thanks for the comment!
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