They may technically be «amateurs», but ham radio operators fight fires, pull all-nighters, and chase their hobby to uninhabited islands.
On a recent evening, around sunset, Marty Sullaway decided to try to get in touch with Japan. The Massachusetts teenager flipped on his radio, pointed his antennas eastward, and hoped for the best. Usually, he can‘t get any farther than Europe, but that day, luck was on his side. «Lo and behold, I called for stations and lots of Japanese came back!» he recalls. «I spent like 45 minutes talking to Japanese stations as quickly as I could.»
Sullaway – call sign KC1CWF – is an amateur radio head. In his spare time, you‘ll find him in front of his setup, turning dials and chatting with fellow radio devotees, or «hams», around the world. It‘s always fun, he says, but some days are better than others: «I will never forget that opening to Japan», he emphasizes, the excitement still clear in his voice. «It‘s like fishing. You never know what you‘re going to get.»
Many people use radio to say something in particular. DJs share music, broadcasters break news, and talk show hosts declaim. But hams are unusual: They love the medium, not the message. While other forms of communication require wires and satellites and fancy gadgets, radio is simple, even elegant. «All you need is two radios, and maybe a tower and an antenna», says David Goldenberg (call sign W0DHG), who lives in California and hosts a popular talk show called HamRadioNow. «You can talk to someone across your city or across the world.» At the moment, the world boasts around 3‘000‘000 amateur radio operators. All of them are officially licensed, and many spend hours every week surfing radio frequencies, hoping to run into each other in the waves.
You can do a lot of things with a ham radio license. Goldenberg is especially interested in emergency communications, or EmComm. He‘s a member of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), which has hundreds of chapters across the United States. «In the event of an emergency, our role is to coordinate with local and government officials to provide emergency radio support», he explains.
Most rescue efforts require fast and frequent communication across long distances. So when a disaster takes down cell service, phone lines, or wifi, the neighborhood hams step in. After Hurricane Maria destroyed infrastructure in Puerto Rico, EmComm volunteers helped helicopters land. They‘ve helped with missing person cases in New Jersey and the Yukon. And as the massive Camp Fire rages in California, ARES groups are enabling Red Cross delivery vehicles to communicate with evacuation shelters while they drive through the mountains.
They also ease people‘s minds by sending «radiograms», which are «like a telegram via amateur radio», says Goldenberg. Hams will distribute radiogram forms to people in hospitals or shelters, who will note a recipient and write a message. («Uncle Bob wants you to know they‘re safe, and they‘re in this location.») «We‘ll send that over the radio to other operators in a place where the phone or the internet works», says Goldenberg, and those operators will relay the message to the desired friend or family member.
Many amateur radio fans prefer more abstract pursuits. One popular pasttime is «contesting», during which large groups of hams compete to see how many people they can make radio-contact with over a set period of time. Again, there‘s not much chatting – «It‘s: Hey, I‘m here! What‘s your name? Ok, bye», sums up Sullaway, who is also the co-founder of the Eastern Massachusetts Contesting Club. «We talk about someone‘s rate – how many people they can talk to in an hour.» A champion contester might talk to 400 people in that time span, nearly seven per minute.
The World Cup of radio contesting is called CQ World Wide. It spans two weekends every year – one in October and one in November – and draws about 35’000 participants. «The goal of this contest is to talk to people who are not in your country», explains Sullaway. «For every person you communicate with around the world, you get a different point value»: zero points for someone in your country, one point for someone outside of your country but on your continent, and two points for someone on an entirely different continent.1 Competitors develop strategies based on where they‘re located, Sullaway says: «To do well in a contest in Boston involves talking to a lot of Europeans as quickly as you can.»
Last year‘s CQ Worldwide winner – Tom Georgens, call sign 8P51 – made contact with 9‘034 other radios over the course of 48 hours. But you don‘t need to be at the top to stay motivated. «There’s this drive to do better», says Sullaway. «Looking at my score from last year – where did I get beat? What frequency band did I not do well? Was my antenna bad on that band? Was I sleeping too much? You can always do better.» (Or, as another competitor put it, «come the spring [contests]… the world will be my oyster, or limpet at least.»)
But what happens when a dedicated amateur does get tired of contests and emergencies? Then it might be time to leave the comfort of the ham shed and strike out into the wider world. Die-hard radio junkies with spare time and money like to go on what are called DX-peditions: trips to far-flung locales, made expressly for the purpose of radio calling. Hams travel, often in a group, to an out-lying peninsula or uninhabited island, with a bunch of equipment in tow. They set up a station, and spend days fielding contacts from people around the world, who are excited to «collect» a contact from an unusual place. Then they pack up and leave.
In the past year alone, hams have criss-crossed the globe simply to call home again. They‘ve broadcast from Somalia and Easter Island. As of press time, the top four most-requested DX-peditions – the places where hams sorely wish they could go – are North Korea, the Scarborough Shoal, and two subantarctic islands.
In case it wasn‘t clear, these trips aren‘t typical vacations. Last year, Sullaway served as the public relations manager for a DX-pedition to Baker Island, a guano-covered speck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The radio work alone: «requires a lot of skill», he says. «When someone says, hey, who‘s there? and 75‘000 people respond, you have to be able to pick out one guy.»2 And then another, and another, as the calls roll in from around the world. The Baker Island DXpedition fielded about 60‘000 of these calls over the course of nine days.
The group came home sunburned but pleased. «These things don’t always go as planned», says Sullaway. «They’re very high-risk, high-reward operations.» This past January, a team set out for Bouvet Island in Antarctica only to be turned back by bad weather just a mile before their destination. «The island lay there in front of us; smiling at us, beckoning us», a sad ham wrote later. «But it was not to be.» Even more recently, a solo DX-peditioner from Norway ended up stuck in Chad, detained after authorities there decided they didn‘t like the look of a guy up on a hotel roof messing with radio equipment.
None of this seems to dampen anyone‘s enthusiasm. Trips are being planned to Madagascar, St. Lucia and Sri Lanka. A CQ Worldwide is coming up. There will always be disasters to drill for. And even without contests, trips and rescues, you get the feeling that the hams would keep hamming it up. «Our motto is, when all else fails, amateur radio», says Goldenberg. «That‘s all we need.»