HAMS

by SSgt Steve Stibbens

Copyright Marine Corps Association Oct 1964

IN A CORNER of Henderson Hall's fiscal office, a card over the door warns: "No enemy would dare bomb this place and end the confusion."

About the only thing confusing, however, is the gobbledegook language you hear being twisted through the maze of colored wires, striped resistors, diodes, transistors and transformers.

It usually sounds something like this:

"W4NTR, this is HK3ATI. Over."

"Go ahead, HK3ATI, this is 4NTR. What's your QTH? Over."

"The handle's Bob and we're in Bogota. Heard you chewin' this a.m. and just wanted to say hello and get on the net. We've got a new rig here. Would appreciate a little QSA Over."

"Howdy, Bob-in-Bogota. We're copying you fairly good. I'd give you about three to four on your QSA. You're getting a teensy bit of QRM on the end, though."

"Rodge, NTR and thanks. I'll fiddle around with the RP gain here a bit. What kinda rig you working? Over."

And so it goes throughout the morning. Henderson Hall's operator, GySgt James Irwin, lets it be known that his handle is "Jim"; he's working a "little KWS-One at a thousand P-E-P, with a TA-33 on top. . . ." The conversation ends with an invitation to get together for a little "eyeball QSO" or face-to-face meeting.

It's Thursday morning, Henderson Hall time, and GySgt Irwin has the net control for amateur radio station W4NTR's hook-up with other ham stations stretching from Chili to Costa Rica and Colombia to Canada.

The conversation was a bit of amateurlese, the jargon of ham radio operators.

Translated, it simply meant that a fellow named Bob in Bogota, Colombia (his QTH or home), was listening to the gunny talking (chewin' the rag) and wanted to know how well his own signals were being received (QSA) in Arlington, Va.

The gunny told Bob the signals were coming in fairly good and that he was getting a teensy bit of interference (QRM) on the end of his transmission.

Sound like a lot of nonsense for two grown men to be playing around at? Hardly.

Amateurs, or hams, as they're called, cover the earth like . . . well, like the dew. At last count, there were more than 350,000 of them scattered around the globe.

"Amateur" hardly seems the word to describe such a scientific hobby. More than just horsing around with a bunch of dials and chewing the rag with other hams, amateur radio operators are essential during disasters and emergencies.

When the lights go out and official antennae are toppled by tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, sleet storms, floods, forest fires and blizzards, it seems there's always a few amateur stations standing by.

Operators at Henderson Hall's W4NTR have experienced several occasions when their services were urgently needed. Recent typhoons which hit Guam resulted in a large number of "We're safe and sound" radiograms relayed to worried relatives in the Washington area. The Cuba blockade generated many messages from evacuated families to the man of the family remaining at Gitmo.

A recent incident involved an urgent request from the Pacific to a New York doctor for a particular medicine. The message was routed to the doctor and the medicine was on the way within a matter of minutes, literally, from the time of the first request.

Besides their peacetime duties, hams have done more than their share during wartime. During World War I, some 4,000 amateurs served as military radio operators. In the Second World War, more than 25,000 hams joined up in one way or another. Other thousands were used in vital civilian electronic research, development, and manufacturing.

Although amateur radio is as old as its first ham, Signor Marconi, the idea hasn't always been too well thought of. Hams have been fighting from the very beginning-not only for their prestige, but for their very existence.

 At first, officials said: "Amateurs? . . . oh, well. . . . we'll stick them on 200 meters and below; they'll never get out of their back yards with that."

But they did. They learned that by relaying, they could span continents. Then along came World War I and the Government put a clamp on unofficial radio transmission. After the war, amateurs kept fighting and finally persuaded the Government to lift the ban.

But an irate chicken farmer darn near got the hams closed down again. He took a case to court, claiming that amateur radio waves were knocking off his birds. After a long investigation by veterinarians, electricians, and others, the hams won.

Their most recent victory was convincing the military that "single sideband" radio was far better for battlefield use than the bulky gear they'd been using. The hams had been using "ssb" for more than 10 years.

The amateur game isn't limited to bored eccentrics with fat pocketbooks or Boy Scouts trying to earn a merit badge. Licensed operators today include hams ranging in age from six to 90. In fact, there's an invalid in California who operates his set with a spoon in his mouth.

All it takes to be a ham is enough perseverance to learn a little about radio theory and c.w. (continuous wave or International Morse Code). One must pass a written test by the Federal Communications Commission and be able to send and copy the code at 13 words per minute.

A ham's rig is only as expensive as he wants to make it. Many beginners build their own sets from a bucket of tubes and bolts. Others may spend thousands of dollars for a roomful of equipment that would make the battalion radioman's tubes pop out.

Neither is amateur radio limited to code or voice operation. The FCC lists licenses issued to amateur teletype stations, photo facsimile, amateur television and radio control for model plane and boat hobbyists.

In fact, MCAS, Iwakuni, Japan, just expanded its amateur station (KA5MC) to include a radio teletype.

No one is certain how long the "ham" bug has been kicking around the Corps, for FCC license applications show only the operator's home address. However, every large and most small posts of the Corps have licensed stations operating as part of the Special Services program. Marine Corps amateur radio stations are sponsored and funded as part of the recreation program.

MCAS, Cherry Point, N.C., for example, has used its club set-up to good advantage during the frequent hurricane seasons along the East Coast. Most of the individual operators own either portable or mobile equipment and make it available for emergency use when the high-kicking hurricane belles prance along the coast.  

Station K4BUJ there was designated as the network control and supervised establishment and operation of a "hurricane net" throughout the Cherry Point area. The net provided emergency communications as a backup to the military radio system.

The mobile units were further used to establish contact with remote areas along the coast to determine the need for any possible assistance from the base.

During the Alaska earthquake, LCpl Larry Perrine, operating at Camp Hauge, Okinawa's station KR6MD, spent three days getting messages in and out of the stricken area by relaying from KL7DT in Adak, to the U.S. mainland via Hawaii.

The Okinawa stations (six belong to the Marines) are also popular with Third Division Marines who want to call home. This is done by phone patch. The stations report an average of 275 contacts a month. Last November, they compiled a landslide 20,000 Thanksgiving Day messages.

The success of reaching distant stations usually depends on the weather, but the Okinawa operators normally try to maintain contact with the U.S. for a few hours each morning, then stand by to receive messages throughout most of the day.

The Henderson Hall station, although it's not the oldest (records show a license issued to a W3AWS at Marine Corps Radio School, Quantico, Va., in 1928), is known around the Corps as the "granddaddy" of Corps ham stations. The station was licensed in 1948 under the name of Capt Sanford B. Hunt (who is now a colonel), then assigned to Comm. Section, HQMC.

GySgt Irwin, who runs the station now, is assigned to the Special Services section, HqBn., HQMC. Each weekday morning between seven and nine, Irwin turns his gear to 14.330-mc. "upper sideband" for the Intercontinental Single Sideband Amateur Network.

Most of the network traffic is running "phone patches" from someone in South or Central America who wants to talk to his kids or a friend in Washington. Or, like during the earthquake in Alaska, W4NTR joined amateurs everywhere to relay messages from survivors of the quake to anxious friends and relatives. 

But talk about sea stories! You should hear these guys! And they've even got a club, called the "Rag Chewers." To qualify, a ham must chew the rag (or talk) with another ham for a solid half hour.

Some of the more notable "rag chewers" in the Washington, D.C., area include "Curt" (General Curtis LeMay, Air Force Chief of Staff), "Barry" (Sen. Barry Goldwater) and "Art" (radio and TV's Arthur Godfrey).

But there's one rigid rule among amateurs: No politics, no military talk, and no business talk allowed.

And one other thing. GySgt Irwin wants to advise sea service schemers that he cannot run over to the monitor at HQMC and get anyone transferred.

W4NTR's contacts aren't limited to the Western Hemisphere, either. "QSL" cards (contact confirmations) which line the station bulkhead include: Kwajalein, South Korea, Norway, Saudi Arabia, France, Morocco, South Africa, Northern Ireland and Antarctica.

We haven't found a ham yet who can say for sure why he plays the game. But once you start, seems it's impossible to quit.

1stSgt K. G. Boso, First Sergeant of H&S Co, HqBn, HQMC, says he got the bug pretty much against his will.

"All I wanted was a little citizen's band radio to put in my car so I could talk with my wife at home," he said "I went over to the comm officer and he wouldn't let me leave until he loaded me up with code books and an application for an amateur license."

That was in 1959 and the "top" has been a ham ever since. In his spare time, 1stSgt Boso helps Irwin operate the Henderson Hall station and publishes a monthly poop-sheet, "The Zero Beat" for information to interested Marine Corps amateurs.

Last year, he unexpectedly received two airplane tickets to Santo Domingo and an invitation for him and his wife to drop down for a week of "eyeball QSO-ing" with another ham with whom he'd talked for several years but had never met.

But all hasn't been fun and games in Boso's ham career. During one hurricane at Cherry Point, he was operating a small transceiver mounted in a low-slung sports car parked alongside a local school which was being used as an evacuation center.

Came the rains, the winds, falling trees and two feet of water. The First Sergeant found himself with one well-buried sports car when the eye of the storm passed and it was time to change locations. It required a five-ton military wrecker to dig him out.

GySgt Irwin says he got started in amateur radio a little earlier than the "top" but it was in pretty much the same way.

"I was out in Tientsin in 1946 will the First Divvy," he said. "The First Sergeant needed a radioman, so the locked me up in a dark, damp cellar with a code chart and a Morse key. He wouldn't let me out 'til I mastered the di-di-dah."

He mastered it.

The gunny says he became a ham later just to let off steam after being tied down to the strict, no-nonsense radio procedure of the military.

Irwin, incidentally, was commended by Secretary of State Dean Rusk for setting up a communications network for the Department's security division to handle the sudden influx of foreign dignitaries attending the funeral of the late President John F. Kennedy.

One use for the Corps' amateur stations that caught on after World War II was the radio romance. Many veterans of the island-hopping Pacific campaign romanced by radio to keep flames nickering with sweethearts in New Zealand and Australia-favorite between-the-battle liberty ports for the Corps.

The radio romance is still pretty popular with Second Divvy troops charging the beaches on Vieques. or Third Divvy Marines serving on Okinawa.

Anyone can talk over the amateur frequencies, but a licensed operator must be on hand to twist the dials, and to help relay the calls through several parties when calls are made over especially long distances.

So, don't be too embarrassed when another operator, mid-way between you and your true love relays:

"Sarge, she said she still loves ya. . . ."

* Since the Corps does not maintain a list of amateur stations, some may exist that are not listed here.

Pictures not shown:  Annotations follow:

• GySgt James Irwin (R) and 1st Sgt K. G. Boso are Henderson Hall's ham operators.

• Cpl R. Ignowski inspects a replacement part for a ham transmitter at Camp Sukiran.

• Cpl Glen Carter operates KR6DI at Camp McTureous, Okinawa, one of six stations serving Marines assigned to the Third Division.

• Amateur radio station W61AB at Camp Pendleton is operated by Cpl Bob Laszko.

• LCpl John McClain relays messages from MCAS, Beaufort's W4BHU ham radio station during special occasions such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.

• San Diego area Marines can rely upon SSgt R. C. Kiter to get their messages across the nation via the ham network.

• LCpl Ed Steedle operates amateur station W6ZJB af MCSC, Barstow, Calif. During emergencies, ham stations can form an international network.