M3CAD'S RADIO WORLD.

I was first introduced to the world of radio at the age of 8 when I was brought a crystal set for Christmas, I was amazed the stations I could hear and sat for hours tweeking the crystal looking for different countrys.

           My Father was a first Officer in the merchant navy and also a proficient radio operator and when he left the navy it became his hobby, he used to take me to the ex army store in Southend were he would buy surplus  radio equipment, he then got it working and we would spend many a happy hour listening and logging stations, he very rarely transmited only doing so when he heard a exotic station.

       This proved to much of a temptation for me and soon started transmitting using a pirate call when he was out, the antenna was a 200 ft long wire.Then it happend!!! I then found out there was these funny things called girls and that was demise of the radio for a good 15 years.

       After being married a few years the call of the radio came back

so I brought a Yaesu 101 and got back in to it pirating again and was quiet content with that for years until a friend of mine who had become a MO was looking for people to make the numbers up at a foundation course, I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that at least I would be legal.

       I  have been buying and selling radio equipment for years and repair radio's as a hobby  still on the bands but legally now and the status symbol of a higher call sign does not bother me at all becouse I have been  there and done that forgotten more than half  these black box operators know. !!!

I have lost count of the different radio's i have owed some excellent and some not so good but I am like every other radio operator aways wanting something else but aways talking about the one we sold, why do we do it????

snobbery

It is a great pity that a potentially useful hobby seems to attract nothing but a bunch of secretive social miss-fits, and otherwise low achievers, to it's ranks.

Amateur radio seems to be a virtually unknown hobby unless you happen to know a radio amateur. The Radio Amateurs Exam seems to be a barrier to "outsiders" but if the truth was known to them as to how easy it really is, we could attract far more participants from all walks of life. The new Foundation Licence appears to be addressing this point.

Snobbery and Hierarchy

Amongst the ranks of radio amateurs there is tremendous and a hierarchy based on your station's call-sign (remember it's the station's call-sign, not yours!) and the type of licence you have.

In the past, well up to the start of the new century in fact, this prejudice was aimed at those who had a "B" class licence - in other words, those who had not passed their Morse exam. Now the childish bigots have a far greater range of fellow amateurs to look down upon.

• Novice licence holders

• Foundation licence holders

• M3 licence holders

• etc. etc.

It is also usual to look down upon and denigrate anyone with a callsign issued after yours.

To look down upon a fellow radio amateur merely because he/she has not passed the Morse test, irrespective of whether they intend to operate below 50Mhz, is as preposterous as a lorry driver looking down upon a car driver who has not bothered to pass an HGV driving test.