What’s a hobby?   I asked.   I was seven years old and the concept of a hobby was new to me.

My Mom smiled and explained that a hobby was an “interest” a “fun thing to do”.

As a young boy, having fun was my total life’s goal so I asked her to show me more!

Not knowing what would  capture my attention, I remember we started with scrap booking.   The first one was all about transportation.   I would search magazines, newspaper articles and pretty much anything I could get my hands on that had pictures of different kinds of transportation.   There were trucks, planes, cars, horses and a whole lot more!   I’d carefully cut them out and paste them into my new scrapbook.

It was fun for a while, but my interest faded.

From there we moved on to photography.   That had me “hooked” for probably a year or so.   I had a kit that taught me how to develop my own pictures (black and white) and even build different kinds of lenses!   It was pretty cool.

But, after a while, I kind of felt like I’d taken pictures of just about everything there was in the world so it was time to move on.

Next was Meteorology.   Mom picked me up a kit that had all the “makings” of a home weather station.   It took me a while but I eventually got it built.   With it I was able to measure the temperature outside as well as inside, calculate the wind speed, barometric pressure and even how much rain we got last night!  I remember I had a Weather Log Book where I would record the readings from the previous day.   After weeks of keeping records I started to see weather “patterns” develop and in time I began to be able to predict the weather.   It was fun.   But, alas, after a while, my daily record keeping slowed down and my attention was ready for something new.

A few weeks later, I remember coming home from school and finding a box on the desk in my bedroom.   On the side of the box were big bold letters that said:  CRYSTAL RADIO KIT.  What’s a Crystal Radio Kit I wondered.   Mom suggested that I open it up and read the description as well as the assembly directions.   After reading everything, I kind of had an idea of what it was but I was still not certain.   So, I got to work, I laid all the parts out on the desk and began building.   A couple of hours later, I slid my chair back so I could get a good look at my creation.   I looked it over carefully and thought to myself….”this is pretty cool looking”!

But I wasn’t done.   The instructions explained that in order for this new radio to work, I needed to add an antenna as high in the sky as I could get it and a good “Earth Ground”.

Now my bedroom was on the 2nd floor of the house, so I had some pretty good elevation for hanging my antenna.    The kit did not contain the wire I’d need so Dad and I took a ride to the local hardware store where we picked up 100 feet of stranded copper wire.   Dad showed me how I could make a couple of insulators from pieces of scrap wood and my antenna was created.

Our garage was about 100 feet or so from my bedroom window so with Dad’s help, I ran the wire from the window to the garage and that part was done.

Now to address the grounding issue.

Our house was an older house with steam heat.  There was a big old cast iron radiator in my room which turned out to be the perfect ground.

So, I was ready to test this thing out.   I remember putting a red wire on the positive terminal and then a black wire on the negative terminal and then hooking them both to three Ray O’ Vac Dry Cells that were wired in series.

As I put the headphones to my ears I had butterflies in my stomach!   Would this thing actually work?   Would this collection of wire, paper tubes, a crystal and clips actually pick up radio signals?

I slipped the headphones over my ears and heard……absolutely nothing.   Well, not exactly nothing, there was a very soft hiss in the background.   I remembered something about “tuning” that I had read in the instructions so I grabbed the paper to reread what it had said.

Then, following what I read, I started to carefully adjust the slider on the tuning coil when suddenly I heard a man speaking!   Holy Crap!  It Works!!!

And that is the story of my “beginnings” into a true Love Affair with radios.   Not long after building that crystal set I was introduced to a man in our town who was an Amateur Radio Operator (Ham Radio).   When I saw his station and listened to him making contacts and having conversations with fellow Hams all over the world I was totally hooked and I have been until this day!

I am now seventy one years old.   I too am a Ham Radio Operator, W1JT and have been for almost my entire life.

As I write these words I am literally surrounded by dozens of radios both old and new, I have hundreds of wonderful ham radio friends who live all over this world and I still get butterflies every time I make a contact.

I can’t imagine my life with out my Ham Radio Hobby.

Thank you Mom.