Journey to Mecca

As we go through life, we engage in certain activities that causes us to want to visit a certain place… sort of like a Muslem’s desire to visit Mecca at least once during their lifetime. Baseball buffs have Cooperstown, New York. Football fanatics long for Canton, Ohio. Race car fans revel in visiting the “Brickyard” at Indianapolis. The list goes on and on. Most of us have at least one and often they are developed by activities that we engaged in as kids. For one of my past interests, the center of the universe is located in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1959 I became an amateur radio operator…. affectionately known as a “Ham”. Ham’s use radio equipment to talk to people literally all over the world and sometimes even provide emergency communications in times of disasters. I had many enjoyable years as a Ham but eventually, as so often happens, I moved on to other interests and my time as a Ham fell by the wayside. But even though I gave up active participation, I’ve always maintained a continuing latent interest.

As a “Ham”, you eventually come to know that the big gorilla organization that most represents the hobby, more than any other, is the American Radio Relay League, otherwise known as the ARRL, headquartered in Hartford. Thus, when we wound up spending a week in the Hartford area, I knew I had to go to see the ARRL headquarters.

For a world wide organization, the place is actually quite small. There is a headquarters building where the bureaucracy does its thing but the Holy Grail is in a much smaller building housing the radio equipment. This is where W1AW, the ARRL’s “Ham” station broadcasts from and it is those broadcasts, heard all around the world, that represents the call of the wild to Ham’s.

For anyone who has been away from a hobby for roughly 40 years, there is a slight problem returning to it, even if ever so briefly, if that hobby is of a technical nature. When I was in active in the hobby, vacuum tubes were the norm in the equipment we used. Those new fangled things called transistors were just starting to come into very limited use. Well, fast forward 40 years. When I walked into W1AW’s station, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The technology of electronic equipment in use today just floored me. The equipment and capability of that equipment that is normal today could barely have been dreamed of back in the late ‘50’s. Since most people reading this wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about, I won’t go into detail describing what I mean but if an analogy may be allowed, it would be like comparing a model T car to the latest models of today containing all the super whiz-bang stuff like GPS navigation, video disc players, satellite radios and computer controlled this and that. Henry Ford would be totally lost and so was I. To say that my jaw dropped a few degrees below the equator would be in the neighborhood of accurate.

So, time and technology marches on and the old is replaced by the new. Sort of a metaphor of life, I guess. But at least now I can die a happy man, for I have visited a place that as a young and idealistic kid, I could only dream of. But it’s nice to know that at least one thing hasn’t changed; they still refer to themselves, ever so affectionately, as Hams. Photo's in the gallery.