Hey, folks.

Liba here we have a special two part interview for y'all with Claude Ray, who shares his fascinating journey into the world of ham radio. This interview was recorded with Guada Rodriguez as part of our oral history project. Look out for part two next week.

Could you explain what is amateur ham radio?

Amateur radio has a hobby and somewhat of a service. It started out back in the first part of the 20th century when radio was first developed. Marconi was the first developer of radio. And like anything else, any technological enterprise, somebody wants to tinker and experiment. And so the amateurs, the ham radio operators, did a lot of experimentation, made their own equipment. And, of course, we have our own jargon, too, almost at homebrew for things that we make at home. But it is a way that you use radio frequencies over a broad band to do different things. One is voice communications, but some people do morse code, and other people use digital devices. And we talk short distances, longer distances. The radio waves refract off the ionosphere. Sometimes they talk to satellites, communicate that way. But there's a whole wide spectrum of definitions of ham radio.

So how did you personally become interested in amateur radio, and what motivated you to pursue it as a hobby?

Well, from the front, when I was as young as I can remember, I was like a lot of people, interested in what goes on, what makes things work, what happens. You put a hairpin in the electrical outlet, but how can we hear people on the radio or the television? I suppose the AM radio that we don't see much of anymore, but it's still out there. The curious part about that is how you can hear the station in town, but you can't hear the one in Chicago, except at night when the sun goes down, it changes, and we can hear stations from further away. That and the shortwave radios, those big boxes, they used to be that they were like a piece of furniture and you see in the museums now, of course, they were interesting because they used tubes and they glowed and they made this pretty colors. But you hear people from all over the world on that, often with languages you didn't understand. So I hope I'm not getting too far away from the question.

I'm curious, how old were you when you started, and what was your environment like at the time, socially? What influenced you?

I was in elementary school, started to realize what goes on. I grew up in an automobile dealership, spent a lot of time around cars and riding in cars, too, and had the opportunity to put things together, see if they worked, see what didn't work, because I knew there was a lot of things going on that you want to know about. And of course, we're talking about well before the Internet and had to read books and had to interpret what was in the books. But for me, I always wanted to see what I could hear. And of course, it was almost beyond me to be able to think I could do the communication. And there were some restrictions on getting an amateur radio license, one being the Morse code requirement, and that eventually I got beyond that. But for me, playing with radios, you may have heard of citizens band radio, CB radios that trucks used to use. A lot of people back in the 70s had CB radios, and I was happy with having a CB radio, but I wanted to do a little more, and so I would make antennas for them or do installation. So it's just the technical challenge of seeing what you can do with the radio.

Sounds like you had this natural curiosity to find out, learn how it actually works.

I think that's right. And a lot of people do, and they express it in different ways. I mean, even now I like to play with computer program and deal with spreadsheets and see what you can do there and not take the status quo is the only way that you can operate. So it's always fun to see, but I've learned enough over the years to know that if you don't know how to do it yourself, you might be able to figure it out or you might find somebody that can show you. Might somebody find somebody that rather do it than you. So it's always fun to deal with people, too.

And can you describe what the process was for obtaining your license and the level of training involved? Were there any challenges that you encountered along the way?

Well, not too many challenges. The basic part I had a notion of before because I had interest in radio, and I knew some of the principles you have to learn electronics theory and different regulations, but it all leads up to a couple of levels of testing that you can do. And so for me, just doing the study, you can do practice tests. For a long time, we've had different ways to practice nets. We're getting more and more different ways to do it. But the big thing that changed for a lot of people that got ham radio licenses was ability to have local testing done. Before I got my license, people had to go to a federal communications commission's office, sometimes a long way from home, and that put them off. That wasn't my challenge. Back to the Morse code. That was my challenge. I really was hesitant to learn it because I didn't want to communicate using Morse code. So they came up with a new license class in 1992 that allowed you to get a license without the Morse code requirement. So I said, boy, that is for me. So I went and took the test pretty fast and quickly got my license, and quickly discovered I didn't all the operating privileges. There were still a few more levels of license to take to get the ability to communicate beyond next door. So I had to learn Morse code after all. But I was already in it at that point. So I did learn the Morse code, and that took some time, and it was a good challenge at that point, I was already in my late thirty s, and by that time, a lot of us quit learning. So, well, learn things differently. And learning Morse code is like learning a new language. It is a new language in a way, but then as you have to go through the levels of licensing, you have to get faster with it. So a buddy of mine and I both discussed it a lot. He was a teacher. We were both going for the same license. He said, you know, you have to learn a different way to see things, and you can't stop count the dips and daws in Morse code. You have to start having to recognize the letters and to be able to move quick enough. So we went from five words a minute, which is really slow code, where you can count everything, to 20 words a minute, was the fastest that we had to pass for a test. There were some additional technical requirements, but again, I had a pretty good background in interest in radio. I wasn't an electronics engineer. That's really kind of the equivalent on the civilian side. But I had an interest and had some practical knowledge that I gained. So it made it fairly easy to pass the test.

So given that you went through that process and having to learn Morse code where you are standing, how do you reflect, looking back on that, how fundamental was it to learn Morse code, and why would you say it's so important?

Actually, Morse code was the original method of communications when they didn't have voice availability before the telephones, before you could tune the radio on and hear somebody talking. That's the basic. It's like zero and one. For digital communications, either radio was on or off, and that goes back to when Marconi first discovered radio or developed it. And it was held over amateur radio for a long time, that you had to learn Morse code to be able to communicate. But by the time I got my license in 92, they were already doing plenty of different voice modes and plenty of digital modes, too. So it was kind of a holdover and that happens in a lot of hobbies, a lot of different areas that we want to be. It's sort of a gatekeeper. You got to really want to do it to get it. Now, since that time, Morse code requirements been completely dropped. It's not even tested on for amateur radio license, but in the hands now that it's not a requirement, honestly, Morse code is having a resurgence. It's kind of like an interesting thing to do, and people take on the challenge, and again, it's like another language. You learn a different way, and it helps you expand your mind and do something that clog can't do very much right now.

So let's go in and jump into the type of equipment that you use for your. For your radioactivities. And how could you. Could you let us know what you own, what you use, and how you have acquired and maintained it over the years?

That's good, because it brings me back to another point. I got my license in 92. I was living in Elberton, about 40 miles east of Athens. We lived in a home with a pretty good sized lot, so I had room to put antennas up and operate the way I wanted to. But we moved in 98 to Athens. I had to downsize, and that cut back on my ability to use radios very much at home for several reasons. One is the noise, one is the area available. And, of course, in that same time period, my life changed with my family, so I had less time and availability to do it. But I had bought equipment back then, and I had two or three radios that I bought, and I still kept my license up from 92 until now. Didn't do a lot with the radios for 20 years, and this is kind of a common AM radio operator story. They come and go as far as your opportunity to do it also makes me think, there's a man I met actually visited Norway with the national guard. We were talking about how familiar we are, how active, and he said, it's the same way everywhere. In every hobby you get. Sometimes you kind of let it fall by the wayside, and then you pick it back up later. So that's what I did. And back in 2020, I met a fellow named Jess Hickey. M four J-A-H is his call. And he mentioned, he pointed at an antenna there at his shop. He said, I use that for parks on the air, and that's a program that I got really involved with in 2020. And so I got out my old radios and tried them, and, of course, they were at that point about 20 years old. They worked okay, but they didn't work nearly as well as a newer piece of equipment would work. So I started buying new radios, and the parks and the air thing is one thing that's really gotten a lot of ham radio operators re involved and also new ones to come out to do it. It's where you take your radio, go outside and set up in a park. And park is a pretty broad term. Other stations, other radio operators will call you and attempt to make contact with you. And so in the process, I've got more radios and you ask about the equipment. I actually got a couple of bags in the truck, one have a pole that's about 23ft tall. I can set up anywhere I want to go almost. And then I've got a wire antenna. I've had a couple of different ones, but I made my own wire antenna. It's about 60ft long. Then I got a small radio about a little bigger than a cell phone. And I keep a laptop with me to keep track of who I've talked to. Now we'll say technology has helped because you can get out there and start calling, say, hey, I'm at this park and I have to trust somebody will find me. But because of the power of the Internet now we can spot ourselves and let people know I will be at this place or am here now. And this is exactly what frequency I'm on. And that speeds things up a lot too.

And that is all you need, what you have in your car with you to actually be able to send and receive messages?

Oh, absolutely. It's even a little overkill. But there are some bigger ones. I mean, when I started out, I had a bigger radio, bigger batteries. Batteries built in this radio. But absolutely, I can take wire in the radio and nothing else, and put the wire up in the tree and I'm ready to go in ten minutes. I'm ready to talk to, maybe less.

That's pretty incredible. Could you share some memorable experiences or any stories from your radio activities? Is there a particular contact event that kind of stands out to you?

The one that really stands out to me, and it wasn't particularly spectacular, but I was one day at my home in Elberton communicating to a ham radio operator in the middle of Russia, just about 180 degrees around the globe. And what caught my attention then was how fast radio waves travel. Because we were talking, as soon as I would release my microphone, he would be there just immediately. It's like there was no time lag. I mean, it's really only maybe a quarter of a second, make that travel halfway around the globe, maybe even quicker than that. It seemed like he was almost able to respond immediately to my comments or me to him, and that one really caught my attention. It's not the point. I was talking halfway around the world without any telephone or Internet or wire. We were going through the atmosphere. That was a big one. But there were a couple other times, too. Like I said, I went to Norway, got to set up a radio station briefly over there. Met a ham over there. Nice guy. I would have probably never met some of the people I did because I was looking for a place to set up my radio. Not too many more than that, but I was trying to think there's another maybe. So I guess, I suppose, I think at some point we'll talk about emergency services. Back in 94, Georgia had a big hurricane that stalled out over central Georgia called Alfredo. And so I went to southwest Georgia, where they anticipated a flood set up with four or five other amateur radio operators because we expected the services would be washed out by the flood in a few days. So we drive to the other end of the state. It's about 250 miles, maybe a little farther down there, set up in a school building. They were evacuating people, and we were prepared to communicate back to Atlanta, where the Georgia Emergency Management association office is, and to let them know if normal communications fail. Well, luckily, normal communication never failed, but we established that connection. We were able to do voice and digital communications from both sides of the river down there because that was the other point. Some of the bridges were being challenged. Luckily, nothing got that bad, but we were ready for about five days, so that's kind of rewarding, too.

Were you nervous at all during the whole time?

No, we were pretty well prepared. We did anticipate things. I did learn a lot then about what we expected we'd face and what was reality, and learned a lot about emergency services. Just seeing how the Red Cross and other agencies responded, how the law enforcement, public safety responded, I did not expect them to be evacuating people immediately, but we were interface with them somewhat, too, which was kind of a surprise. Luckily, the risk wasn't as bad as they expected initially.

That's good to hear. So talking about technological advancements such as the Internet, now other digital modes, how has that affected the amateur radio community? And do you think it's been like a positive impact or a negative impact overall?

We hear it both ways on ham radio, because once you get your ham radio license, you generally keep it for a long time. So I'm honestly, pretty close to the median age for amateur radio operators. And so, as you can imagine, there's some comments about how this item or this item, this change in technology, is breaking ham radio, but it's not necessarily so. I think the successful ham radio operators, like the successful person, you got to embrace the technology, embrace the change, but realize it doesn't always have to mean that it changes you. But as far as the technological changes, when I was growing up, and this probably affected my interest in ham radio, is I had another ham radio operator who was a neighbor a couple of houses away, and his whole garage sized room was full of equipment. And, I mean, it was fancy tower out there, and it was really nice. But now you can do the same almost with what I've got in the trunk of my car out there. It made a big change. The Internet. We leverage it if some ham radio operators use it for different things. And sometimes we have interfaces between the radio and an Internet base. So you may have a handheld radio that works on a digital voice net that communicates to a hotspot type or node in someone's home via radio, and then it transfers to the Internet. It goes via Internet to another ham radio operator anywhere in the world that the Internet's available, and then they can use the radio on that side, too. So there's some hybrids of both radio and Internet based products, too.

And so since you've been involved in this hobby for a while, have you developed any lasting friendships through your radio contacts?

Yeah, I think so. Not any too many distant ones, but a lot of local ones mentioned the fellow that was a teacher that was in Elberton, that we were doing the licensed class together and going through saints. He lives here in Gainesville, though I live in Athens. We talk a lot in person as much as on the radio. But then there's a thing called repeaters with ham radio, where you can have the little radio that only talks a few miles, but if you can talk to a repeater, which is a tall tower with a radio that retransmits your signal, you can hear from a long way away and communicate. And there are a lot of guys in Athens and Gainesville and different places that I've talked to a lot, maybe never even met them in person. And that's kind of a fun thing, too, but sometimes with the longer range communication. Even recently, desert felt lives in South Florida that I talk to frequently and always has a little know. Some people have a different character to their voice, and he's a really pleasant guy. A couple others that I hear frequently, too, because I go to parks about every other. So some of those people that are local means within two states. I hear some of the same voices frequently and before they ever finish their calls. And I know who it is because of that too. It's nice to have that relationship.

You can recognize someone's voice and you just know who it is.

Sometimes it's a voice, sometimes it's a radio. And I tell you, along those same lines, some people that do more scode than I do, they call it a fist. They can hear the sound the way they actually do the dits and dods when they're sending the signal so they can recognize that's so and so's fist. They know that call sign. That's the way they operate. And sometimes it's a tone that they hear on the speakers, too.

That's fascinating. Morse code is just for homeschool days. When students come, we try to have a whole set up for them so they can communicate with Morse code. And I'm usually in the background taking pictures or photos, and it just looks difficult to understand.

It is, and it is just like learning a different language. Can you imagine? I don't speak Japanese. I have no notion of how I've heard the sound. And just like you may have heard, they call it Cw continuous way, Morse code sounds. But once you start to recognize words, characters, bits of it, then it starts to come together. But in the beginning it's just two tone like that, back and forth. And you know they're carrying on communications. But until you learn the language, it makes it hard. The other part though, speaking of language, is lingo. I've been doing my best to not use ham specific words, but my home is my Qth as Q codes. There's an online resource called qrZ, qrz.com where Hams can look up different things. There's a whole string of Q codes out there. Sometimes we'll refer to each other as oms, old men. That's really the way it works. But even a saying for best regard called 73. And you'll hear AM radio operators say that pretty often, too. But I'm sure if I've probably had some slip out. Have you heard me say anything that didn't seem logical?

I know, but let's get into that.

Well, so if I go to a park and my buddy down in Florida is there, it's a brief exchange. Generally, if he didn't say anything else, I'll be saying CQ. CQ, that means calling all stations or it's not like cu, it's like Charlie. I'll get into phonetics, too, the letters C and Q. And for ham radio operators, that means I'm here, I'm ready to take your call, CQCQ. This is our Alpha Charlie four Sierra hotel, which is my call sign in phonetics, AC 48. And I may say I'm at park Kilo 2177, which is Fort Yargo State park and Winder. And then I'll say, qrz, somebody call me or somebody calling me. And then his response might be, kilo four Charlie Lima Foxtrot, I hear you five by nine. And so that's a lot of jumbo lingo stuck in there together. But the CQ means I'm listening to you. The Alpha Charlie four Sierra hotel is the phonetic method of saying ac four sh. The k 2177 is the Kilo 21 77, so designated park number for that park. And QRZ means give me a call. And then he gives me his call sign. By the time he's got Kilo four, I know it's him because I hear his voice. Hey, Cliff, how are you doing down in Pell City, Florida? And I can do it that quickly. It's pretty neat that you can pick up on stuff like that, but it's a whole string. The phonetic Alphabet is, because I got it a lot in the military, but it's international methods of saying the letters. It's supposed to be easier to. Less difficult for different languages to misconstrue which letter it is. So instead of a, you say alpha, but some people like to say able. Well, that gets mixed up in other languages. So the whole Alphabet is there. The CQ is peculiar. You don't ever hear anybody but ham radio operators using that in the 73 is the same way. Some people say it goes back to a railroad code that was used for Morse code operators, and others say it came from William Winchester 73, which was a famous Libra action rifle. And who knows where the 73 came from? Just like ham. Why do you call it ham radio operator instead of amateur? Well, some people say it's just a contraction of amateur. Others say, well, the professional radio operators call you bunch of experimenters hams, because you were kind of running the show over there. It's all sorts of different ways people come up with. Some people get really tied to it and won't relent and won't realize you can speak plain language if you want to. The Q codes is anything. The Q codes are made to make it easier. So if I'm going to change frequency. I'll say I'll Qsy means I'm changing set of that whole longer statement. And part of it is because when you hear signals on the air, sometimes they're not as pure and clean as listen to the podcast over there. It's actually a lot of static and noise in there. We've tried to keep the noise in the studio down, but when you're on the air, you don't have that benefit. You can have, and this is where technologies come into. You can now tune out a lot of noises, and there's a lot of digital processing built in this little bitty radio that I got that helps clean up some of that. But even so, I wouldn't understand somebody. In fact, I grimaced when I handed somebody the microphone a few months back. And instead of him saying QRZ or at the end of the conversation he'd say QRZ. And I said, that's not going to get it. They're going to laugh at you.

So it really comes into play. Especially, it sounds like in emergency situations, having that quick rhythm.

It is indeed. Yeah. In fact, it clarifies what you're asking. You don't tell me. Say that again. You got a term for that. And you are able to not have to repeat things so many times or have the risk that they're going to be miscommunicated.

Then again is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Giles. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada May Ioester Education center. Please join us next week for another episode of then again.