Riding the Waves : Ham Radio Club Competes to Tune In New Voices

At an abandoned missile site overlooking the San Fernando Valley, they hunkered down under the scorching sun, and then the stars, to troll the far reaches of the airwaves.

Tom Christian (VR6TC), a descendant of mutineer Fletcher who still lives on Pitcairn Island, was out there somewhere, as was the Sultan of Oman (A4XAA).

Marlon Brando (WA6RBU and FO8GQ), who lives just across the Valley but is more difficult to contact by traditional means than Juan Carlos, King of Spain (EA1JC), was out there too.

The San Fernando Valley Amateur Radio Club was trying to reach as many of the 1.5 million other ham operators around the globe as possible Saturday and Sunday. But because they had just 24 hours in this national competition against other clubs, there was little chitchat.

Whether it was the Vatican or Joe Blow in Jersey on the other end, members of the group exchanged their call signs, said a hasty goodby and twirled off to another band of radio waves in search of a new voice or the spitfire beep of a Morse code key.

“CQ, CQ, CQ,” called out Steve Wardlaw, asking anyone anywhere who received the transmission to respond. “CQ, CQ. This is Whiskey Six Sierra Delta.”

The ham operators--several of whom carried portable radios on their belts and one of whom attached a clip-on antenna to the bill of his baseball cap--spoke a language that requires continual translation for the uninitiated.

Men called each other by their call signs instead of their given names. They would decide to broadcast a CQ by CW, or Morse code. And when the sun dropped, the DX calls went out.

DX is Hamspeak for international transmissions, among the more exotic adventures to be had via amateur radio.

“It may sound stupid, but when you get your first contact with a foreign country, it’s quite thrilling,” said club president Irv Slitzky.

The manager of a security firm, Slitzky has spent an hour or two virtually every day for the last six years trying to reach every country on Earth. The splintering of the Soviet Union and wars in places such as the former Yugoslavia have kept adding and subtracting countries to the list. But of 326 “active” nations, he has special postcards verifying contact with 321.

He has chatted with Monk Apollo at Mt. Bathos, Greece. He talked with Julio Vera-Cruz in the Republic of Cape Verde. And although talking politics is discouraged, Slitzky likes to think ham operators have done their bit to promote world peace.

“Even during the Cold War, the Russians were still very warm,” he said. “Even now in Slovenia, it’s not which side you’re on, it’s, ‘All the best to your family.’ ”

Although much of the hobby involves technical study--which frequencies propagate best during daylight, how sunspots affect transmission, the fine points of bouncing a signal off the moon--and repetitive practice like at this competition, there is little that ham operators enjoy more than putting their knowledge to practical use.

The first word of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait came from a Kuwaiti ham operating out of his basement, according to club member Jamie Markowitz. Russian hams first told the world about the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl.

During the Northridge earthquake of January, 1994, members of this group acted as liaisons between police, fire and other agencies, many of which operate on separate frequencies and can only contact one another by telephone--a serious problem when phone lines are down.

The Bonilla family--Nelson, Cecilia and their children Nelson Gerardo, 11, and Kendra, 9--find radio waves far cheaper than long-distance phone calls to Cecilia’s family in El Salvador.

Of course, conditions have to be just perfect and, in the end, chatting with the in-laws is pretty much the same regardless of the medium.

“We’ve been able to talk for one hour--two hours, sometimes,” Nelson said this weekend. “So long, we get tired.”