[NCC] FW: Ham Radio Article in NY Times

[Lee, Thomas J.]

Guys --
 
This is an interesting book review on our "arcane but still thriving hobby" that Paul NO8D (Mr. "DX Engineering") forwarded to me.  Apologies to those for whom the post is a dupe.  (The book is also reviewed at Amazon.com.)
 
73,
Tom, K8AZ

	 <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/misc/logoprinter.gif>  <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/adx/images/starbucks21b-nyt4/printersponsor.gif> 
	                                                                                                                              May 4, 2003 
	
	 <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/05/04/arts/sala.184.jpg> 
	
	A QSL card commemorating the first gulf war. 
	
	Ham Radio Operators Connected the World (and Still Do) 
	
	By JULIE SALAMON 
	
	
	 <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/d.gif> ANNY Gregory and Paul Sahre may have been particularly susceptible to the lure of ham radio. Mr. Gregory, 42, was tuned in to the Internet almost 20 years ago, when it was a mysterious closed community; Mr. Sahre, 38, has the nose cone from a Nike-Ajax surface-to-air missile on display in his graphic design studio. They understand the romance of the geek.
	So it's probably not surprising they would feel a connection with Jerry Powell, an aeronautical engineer who talked to the world from his basement in Hackensack, N.J. For 70 years, until his death two years ago, and long after the Internet became commonplace, Mr. Powell systematically and compulsively made contact with other ham radio operators in at least 151 countries. After a conversation, many of them would send Mr. Powell what was known as a QSL card, QSL being the Morse Code shorthand for making contact with someone. Some were quirky, others artistic, others generic, but all served as concrete proof of an ephemeral meeting.
	It was the cards that led Mr. Gregory and Mr. Sahre to Jerry Powell, and to their book, "Hello World: A Life in Ham Radio," published this month by Princeton Architectural Press. Mr. Gregory, who lives in Greenwich Village, noticed a thick album lying open on a folding table near the entrance of the Sixth Avenue flea market just over a year ago. Mr. Gregory didn't know what the brightly colored cards inside were, but he wanted them, badly. After buying the album and taking it home, he went on the Internet and learned what he had: a collection of 369 QSL cards.
	Mr. Gregory, who is chief creative officer at Doremus advertising, showed the cards to his friend Mr. Sahre, who has designed book jackets. Mr. Sahre's reaction to these arcane objects — some of them quite beautiful, others beautifully strange — was immediate. "My first instinct was, this is a book," he said.
	Initially, he saw it as a reference-style book that would appeal to other graphic designers. "There are books about board games, match-box covers and snow globes," he said. "We're always looking at a drawing or typeface or photograph we can use.'`
	But as the two men discussed the cards, and became curious about the man who received them, they became fascinated by ham radio — an arcane but still thriving hobby, with about 675,000 operators in the United States and more than 2.5 million worldwide. Tens of thousands of them will gather in Dayton, Ohio, this month for an annual "hamvention." "We wanted to tap into the idea of someone being obsessed with this wacky thing no one else knows about," said Mr. Sahre.
	As Mr. Sahre began imagining what a book might look like, Mr. Gregory began tracking down the people who sent Mr. Powell cards. He got in touch with the daughter of an operator from Chile, and learned about a prince in Kuwait whom Mr. Powell had contacted during the first Gulf War. He talked to Yan Bambang Susanto, who lives in Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city, about his contact with Mr. Powell.
	Mr. Gregory also realized, from newspaper clippings he found in the album, that Mr. Powell routinely used news stories to target prospective contacts: he wanted to meet people where things were happening. Following this example, Mr. Gregory began using the cards — which contain dates as well as locations — to learn about history and geography in a new way.
	He discovered that Prince Patrick Island in the Arctic Ocean was found in 1853 and named for Queen Victoria's third son. He learned about Father Marshall Moran, a Jesuit priest and missionary in Nepal, who was an ardent ham radio operator for 40 years. He found that King Hussein of Jordan, Marlon Brando and Priscilla Presley were ham operators.
	"I wish I'd met the guy," Mr. Gregory said of Jerry Powell. "He was able to go behind the Iron Curtain to talk to Russians at a time there's no other way a Westerner could have had that kind of contact. Just sitting in his basement, he had so much experience. And it was all so human. It wasn't like reading books, which is how I learn about stuff. He actually spoke to people one on one, to learn about the world."
	It's understandable that Mr. Gregory would feel drawn to the implicit yearning in all those contacts. His grandparents moved to Pakistan as Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930's. His mother went to school in England, Mr. Gregory's place of birth. Before he was 13, he lived in Pakistan five times, in Australia for four years, and in Israel for three years. Along the way his mother divorced his father and married two more times, finally settling with Mr. Gregory and one of his stepfathers in Brooklyn. "We were adventuresome," Mr. Gregory said.
	Mr. Sahre's history produced another kind of connection. His father, like Mr. Powell, was an aerospace engineer, and a collector; he has 10 books of pictures he ripped out of sports magazines and sent to athletes to have them autographed. Mr. Sahre's grandfather was a ham radio operator in upstate New York.
	Eventually, Mr. Gregory and Mr. Sahre became so involved that they decided to become licensed ham radio operators. This was no small commitment. Unlike the Internet, which is available to almost anyone who can turn on a computer, amateur radio isn't easy to use. It requires proficiency, a federal license, a special vocabulary and adherence to protocol. The original amateur's code, written in 1928, decreed that ham operators should be considerate, loyal, progressive, friendly, balanced and patriotic. In other words, no porn sites allowed.
	It's also public, an audible chat room with open entry. When a ham operator speaks, anyone tuning in can listen. And serious ham radio operators regard themselves as a quasi-governmental force, on call for emergencies. After the attacks on the World Trade Center, a group of them went to ground zero to help coordinate communication between the fire department, the police and the national guard, who were all on different radio frequencies.
	The book Mr. Sahre and Mr. Gregory have produced has the eloquent design of a striking coffee table book, but it is also rich with scientific, historic and geographic information. There is conventional biographical detail about Jerry Powell — he grew up on a farm in Kansas, he worked for Bendix, he married a woman named Mabel. But this oddly poignant book captures another aspect of Mr. Powell and others like him, obsessive people with hidden selves, who exist somewhat apart from ordinary life, yet are eager to say hello to the world. 
	
	
	
	

	Copyright 2003 <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>  The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  | Home <http://www.nytimes.com/>  | Privacy Policy <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/privacy.html>  | Search <http://query.nytimes.com/search/advanced/>  | Corrections <http://www.nytimes.com/corrections.html>  | Help <http://www.nytimes.com/membercenter/sitehelp.html>  | Back to Top <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/arts/television/#top>