A brand-new Coast Guardsman aboard USCGC Tamaroa receives an impossible ship-to-shore phone call—and soon finds himself in dress blues on the fantail, waiting for a boat from Cape May that will never arrive.

A roughly $300 handheld had left me wondering whether amateur radio from my Brooklyn apartment was practical. Then a Nagoya NA-701 costing about sixteen dollars let me hear one little repeater tail—and changed the direction of my entire station.

A quiet 0400 watch at Coast Guard Group San Francisco suddenly erupts with a clear Mayday call—and turns into my favorite almost-case.

APRS is much more than location tracking. From my 17th-floor apartment in Brooklyn to field tests around Coney Island, I’ve been exploring how radios, GPS, iGates, DMR, messaging and plenty of troubleshooting come together—one packet at a time.

ChatGPT has become my always-available virtual Elmer—a patient tutor, reference assistant, and partner in organizing what I learn. Used thoughtfully and checked against authoritative sources, AI is helping me build my station, my Operator’s Handbook, and perhaps the skills to Elmer someone else.

In the summer of 1984, a young Coast Guard Quartermaster went to Navy Signalman “A” School in Orlando to learn flaghoist, semaphore, message handling and Morse code by flashing light. He graduated first in his class—and a couple of years later discovered, with a Radioman beside him and the captain waiting, exactly how quickly an unused skill can get rusty.

A handheld radio, a little box beside my computer, and an internet connection have turned my Brooklyn apartment into a doorway to the world. The technology is impressive. The people on the other side of it are the point.

QSO One brings AllStarLink, EchoLink, DMR, M17, and YSF together in one modern application. But its real story is the growing community of operators helping Frank, KD8JKK, build a simpler doorway into digital voice radio. Through active testing, feedback, and conversation, that community is helping shape QSO One into more than another radio app. It is becoming a shared gathering place built by hams, for hams.

From my apartment in Brooklyn, DMR lets me open a door to the world with my BridgeCom Maverick and HamSpot 5. It combines radio, modern networking, familiar nets, worldwide contacts and, most importantly, the people behind every callsign. That human connection is why DMR has become such an important part of how I operate.

In July 2017, I created and led the Coney Island SAREX, a large-scale CERT exercise built around a simulated search for a missing vulnerable senior. With nearly one hundred participants, multiple radio nets, a formal Incident Command structure, medical support, and my stepfather playing “Waldo,” the exercise turned FEMA classroom concepts into practical experience. It was hot, complicated, occasionally funny, and a powerful lesson in why ICS has to be practiced—not merely studied.

During the 1977 New York City blackout, a 13-year-old in Brooklyn helped relay radio traffic for REACT and the NYPD—an early glimpse of the role emergency communications would play throughout his life.

A childhood visit to a Brooklyn amateur-radio station changed everything. One contact with the Falkland Islands revealed how radio could make the world feel both enormous and surprisingly small.