I became a “bonafide” ham radio operator during field day 2025 (after some insistent coaxing from Dave, the club president) when I made my first QSO followed by 5 others in the last 20 minutes of the event. I could not have made them without his assistance, in fact, all I did was talk into the microphone when prompted, even that was more difficult than I had imagined.
Alan AK6MF operating GOTA with Dave AI6VX
It is a common misconception among non hams that all it takes is a radio and a license to become one. I held that notion myself until I was shown that it takes a whole lot more.
I had gotten my amateur extra license sometime before but had not gotten on the air due to performance anxiety and the love / hate relationship I have with antennas.
I am fascinated by them but I do not want my home to look like an antenna farm. My attempts at incorporating long wire antennas has had little success due to various factors which I am unable or unwilling to rectify.
My house has a sloped roof on all sides which limits the headroom area in the attic and the rain gutters, which run along the lower roofline, are metal and connect to a drainage system thus making them act as a ground plane. To add to this, I live in one of the few areas in Ventura that have underground utilities, meaning I have no power lines running through my back yard which can disguise my antenna. My wife is an avid gardener and there is no place in her vision of yard plants and trees for wires of any kind.
So I find myself navigating toward the art of covert antennas. This would normally mean limiting my operations to the upper end of the spectrum where antennas become smaller and my dependency on low noise amplifiers becomes significant.
That in itself is not a problem, I am not one to chew the fat, so to speak and tie up air time, mostly because I do not have anything significant to talk about, however, the long range capabilities of HF became apparent to me at field day when I contacted operators in Ohio, Indiana and Iowa on a 20 meter rig using a simple wire antenna, it was awesome.
I still have not put up my “dream antenna” however, I am a lot closer to becoming operational, if only by motivation. Perhaps it was not about the antenna at all.
Thank you, Dave, for making it possible for me to log contacts during Field Day 2025!
