My last Blog as NSRC President

I don’t really remember how these Blogs got started. I think we were looking for content for our eMitter and someone suggested I write up a monthly article.  It seemed like a good idea at the time until you sit down and write something. To be honest these have been a great deal of fun and given me a channel for my inner Hemmingway!  I appreciate the kind thoughts many of you have shared over the years…it is good to know that someone reads these things! 

Almost to the day I joined this club I started serving on the Board!  Well, the club needed volunteers and I was eager to learn. Before the ink was dry on my newly obtained FCC license, I was asked to be President! How desperate were these guys, I thought? I was stunned…I would say honored, but I know they were really struggling to find help and they spotted a sucker a mile away. Still, I resisted and said no to the Prez position at that time and worked instead as our program director. Turns out, that was a great adventure. I took the same skills I used in my video production business to find experts from around town and had them come out to address issues largely I was eager to learn as well…lightning protection, grounding, amplifiers, new trends, antenna designs…whatever. I worked very hard to bring people outside of the club to present at our meetings. I had made a few connections with some Motorola engineers and for while we had a great stream of talent coming from Moto land. Eventually, I assumed the Field Day chair as well and started to apply what I had learned at our meetings to real world problems. I will admit…I knew nothing when I started these things but quickly learned or found smarter people to help!  What I learned from one project, fed another. The support we provide the Chicago Marathon, for instance, is an extension of what I learned from our Field Day exercises. Also, I enjoyed working alongside some of our very talented homegrown talent, setting up our repeaters or working on club projects.

I used the Club as my ham radio academy and I encourage you to do the same. We have so much great talent here and the hobby has exploded with diversity, complexity and multiple modes. Heck, you can be a ham today and never even use a radio! I got hooked on kit building and found incredible pleasure in just sitting down with a soldering iron and fusing projects together. Not all of them worked, right off the bat. Of course, mistakes were made, but that is how you learn.

So, for the 20 plus years I have been a member of this club and a member of this Board, I have learned so much from you. I am very grateful for your generosity and willingness to teach a willing student. 

Being a member of the Board and being President had its own rewards. It is incredible to witness the power of bringing a group of strong-minded individuals to a consensus on an issue. There is definite truth to be found when you leverage many minds to focus on a problem. It has been the honor of my life to work with the members of the NSRC Board. Together, we have accomplished many great goals. I hope to continue to be active moving forward, just wearing a different hat. There just us a time in every organization when fresh minds need to step forward. Change can be healthy.

As we move into our 40th year as a Cub, I realize I have been serving this organization for almost half of those years. That blows my mind. I was 12 years old when I joined!!

And while my DX chasing days have greatly slowed down because of my responsibilities here, my love for this hobby and the incredible opportunity it affords folks for education or personal development has not abated. This hobby really is about the people it attracts. For the most part, ham radio draws people with curiosity, a thirst for practical knowledge, a desire to be social. Along the way I discovered my pack rat tendencies – which seems to be part of every ham’s life. I now have lots of stuff…sometimes multiple versions of the same item.  Certainly, much more than when I started.  By that measure alone, I have become a real ham.

By far the best part of this hobby has been working with the members on various projects. I have installed antennas or removed towers; installed equipment in shacks or helped with trouble shooting.  This past weekend, I spent the morning helping a ham install a controller for his antenna. Part of the fun is trying to interpret the poorly written English translated instructions that comes with today’s equipment. In this case, it took two of us to read between the lines to figure out how to get the gizmo to work. Certainly, in my public service life, I have worked along side some very capable folks who really demonstrated the most positive side of this hobby. We are blessed to have many people who really enjoy helping others, either in providing disaster communications or helping to support events or just helping to read an instruction manual together. This was one of the defining parts of my early life in this club. Almost weekly we would have antenna parties, or public service projects. That spirit has not diminished, I am very glad to report.

The other day I sat down with one of our newest members to help figure out some possibilities for antennas placements on his property.  My own house has become a symbol and a beacon of possibilities (much to my wife’s consternation).  He saw my place while driving down Lake Ave and asked for a consult. Well, I remember all too well where I was when I was just starting out. Every Saturday morning, 20 or more of us would meet for breakfast at Max’s Deli and engage in radio discussions. Quite often that would break down into smaller user groups for people who had purchased one type of radio or another and needed guidance. Our club breakfasts continue to this day, although not the numbers we had in the past, but the need to share what we know with one another continues.

I have loved every aspect of the hobby…the technology, the experimentation, the social side and the global friendships. For this and much more, I thank you for all that you each have brought to the hobby. Thank you for the privilege of serving you these many years.

Rob

K9RST

December 2019