Originally published Sunday, June 19th, 2016 by KHGI Nebraska TV<\/p>\n
Hastings, NE \u2014 Swapping parts and stories face-to-face, when radios and transmitters are usually how these friends talk.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to see people that you talk to all the time in person, and that\u2019s part of what the Hamfest is all about,\u201d says organizer Brad Harpham.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first Greater Midwest Radio Show, and Harpham says they hope to grow it into Nebraska\u2019s biggest such event for regional amateur radio operators – folks who still use frequencies to communicate, a method more than a century old.<\/p>\n
\u201cFederal Communications Commission lets us have some parts of the band, and we get an amateur radio license and we can either talk to people using voice, or there\u2019s new digital modes, kind of like digital text messages and that kind of stuff,\u201d says Harpham.<\/p>\n
Though there is old equipment on display at the show as well, hams aren\u2019t a thing of the past, operators say, with more people getting licensed every year.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of that is because we no longer require Morse code to get your ham license, you just take a test,\u201d says Harpham.<\/p>\n
But Joe Eisenberg, a longtime operator from Lincoln who teaches and talks at many radio conventions, says oddly enough a lot of people are interested in learning those dots and dashes that make up Morse, an even older form of communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of new hams have discovered the old way of communicating is very efficient, and it\u2019s a lot of fun,\u201d says Eisenberg.<\/p>\n
The hams say they\u2019re drawn to the electronics and engineering side of the hobby, but some also like being able to share information outside of the infrastructure they say could fail in a disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat cell phone becomes a brick, totally useless, but ham radio still works, we can still talk, we can communicate even worldwide using the atmosphere to carry our signal,\u201d says Eisenberg.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one reason why the National Weather Service calls the operators reliable, knowledgeable, and a potential back up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been around helping the weather service for decades, and so they really facilitate more reports for us. We have a network of people that we work with – the spotters, we have people we call, but they just add to that,\u201d says Mike Moritz, warning coordination meteorologist at the NWS Hastings.<\/p>\n
Local hams say they\u2019re getting together again next weekend for a field test day at the Hastings College Observatory. They also say they\u2019re testing new operators monthly, so it\u2019s a good time to get involved.<\/p>\n