The Contact That Started It All

My interest in radio began when I was a Cub Scout in Brooklyn.

One day, Cub Scout Pack 79 visited the home of a local amateur radio operator in Trump Village. I do not remember his callsign, and after all these years some of the equipment details have faded, but I clearly remember the station itself: a large tube radio, a classic desk microphone, and the unmistakable feeling that this was serious communications equipment.

Then he made contact with someone in the Falkland Islands.

To a kid sitting in Brooklyn, that was almost impossible to comprehend. There were no satellites carrying our voices, no internet, no cellular network and no app connecting the two stations. A man in a nearby apartment spoke into a microphone, radio waves left his antenna, and someone thousands of miles away answered.

That moment stayed with me.

Radio suddenly made the world feel both enormous and surprisingly small. Somewhere far beyond Brooklyn was another person listening, and with the right equipment, a little knowledge and an antenna, it was possible to reach them.

Not long afterward, I had a pair of toy walkie-talkies that included a Morse-code button and the alphabet printed on the case. I began experimenting with it, tapping out letters and trying to understand how information could be passed using nothing more than short and long signals. I did not know it at the time, but radio had already planted itself firmly in my imagination.

My path into amateur radio would take many turns. Communications and navigation later became part of my life in the United States Coast Guard, and radio would eventually return through scanning, GMRS, emergency communications, APRS and DMR. Decades after that Cub Scout visit, I finally earned my amateur radio license—first as KE2EMK, and shortly afterward under my present callsign, WB2EHG.

The technology has changed dramatically since that first station visit. Today I can communicate through repeaters, digital networks, hotspots and satellites. I can send position reports through APRS and speak with operators around the world using a handheld radio.

But the real attraction has never changed.

At the far end of every signal is another human being.

And for me, it all began with a Cub Scout trip, a glowing tube radio, and a voice answering from the Falkland Islands.