Put the computer aside, and ham it up for a bit

By Richard Higgins, Globe Staff, 06/27/99

Kristi Lees of Framingham, 19, who got her ''ticket'' or ham radio license when she was 10, knows that her friends at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania either do not know what ham radio is or view it as a quaint, musty hobby.

She also knows that they are wrong.

''E-mail is not as cool,'' Lees, a sophomore who knows her way around the Internet, said last week. ''I had to work really hard to get my license. But anybody can get on the Internet.''

And if a message is either important or urgent, ''you can't always depend on the Internet,'' which relies largely on vulnerable telephone lines and can sometimes be slow, she said. Finally, she added, ''it's easier to hold a conversation'' on ham radio.

Although computers have attracted far more interest, especially among young people, Lees' devotion to ham radio is one reason why it is not fading away as a hobby. Another is that it continues to provide a public service.

This weekend is Amateur Radio Field Day across the state. During the two-day event, local clubs, including those in Wellesley and Framingham, set up a makeshift ham radio station with its own antenna and portable generator and invite the public to use it.

Participants, some of whom cook and sleep overnight in tents at the sites, also test their skills during a simulated, 24-hour emergency as a way of preparing for events such as natural disasters, when ham radio proves its value.

In the region served by West Weekly, there are clubs in Waltham, Wellesley, Needham and Framingham, which are 50 to 60 years old. The Wellesely and Needham clubs are cosponsoring a field day in Needham, on a slope behind the Charles River School for Retarded Citizens on East Militia Road. It began yesterday and continues through today.

The Framingham club, which with 200 members is one of the largest ham radio clubs in the state, is holding its event at Gerard Turkey Farm on Water street in North Framingham.

Lees, who is a member of the Framingham club along with her father and mother and a brother, said she was planning to take part in the field day.

''Besides attracting interest in ham radio, it's a way to make sure that if there is an emergency in the area, we will be prepared to go on the air and transmit health and safety information or messages into and out of the area,'' said Arline Berry of Medfield, president of the Wellesley club.

At the clubs' field days, hams are likely to explain to visitors that computers have not rendered ham radio obsolete. The reason is packet radio, Berry and others explained.

Ordinarily, e-mail messages travel via telephone lines from one computer to the other. In places where electric power and phone lines have been disrupted by natural disasters or war, however, e-mail messages travel via a radio-signal connection called packet radio. The development has given hams a new role plugging gaps and shoring up computer communications worldwide.

(Packet is a facet of ham radio in which computer data or messages are turned into radio signals and broadcast. The messages, however, must be sent and received by licensed hams, who may relay them as standard e-mails along telephone lines.)

Berry is the radio officer of the Medfield Police Department. With other local hams, she helps handle communications each year for the Boston Marathon and various fund-raising events, such as the AIDS Walk and Walk for Hunger.

Ham radio is crucial for logistics at such events, she said, because the number of people trying to use wireless telephones of various kinds jam the available wireless frequencies and cause those networks to crash.

Berry is a lifelong ham and original member of the Waltham Amateur Radio Society, which was founded in 1939. She uses a ''call,'' or on-air identity, that she inherited from her father, who got it around 1925.

''All radio was started by the hams,'' she said.

In the Framingham club, Lees is one of about a dozen members who are under 30. That club, partly because of its large size, has been more successful in attracting younger members than the Wellesley club, which has dwindled from about 75 to 50 members, most of whom are older and have been hams for many years. (Many of the club members also come from towns around Wellesley.)

While most ham radio operators would say that computers and ham radio are complementary, each having its own place, the fact is that the explosive growth of computers has made it harder to recruit younger people.

Due to low attendance, the Wellesley club had to disband regular ham radio classes and switch to once-a-month coaching sessions for prospective hams. The federal government has removed one obstacle to people with only a casual interest in ham radio by removing the requirement to learn Morse Code for all classes of licenses.

''I'm afraid e-mail is knocking the heck out of ham radio,'' said Gerard Driscoll of Needham, the treasurer and a longtime member of the Wellesley club.

On the other hand, the Wellesley club does have four or five new members all of whom are children of existing members who, following their parents, have gotten their licenses themselves.

Why do people become hams?

''It's the service aspect of it that I find most rewarding,'' said Kristi Lees, who on emergency communications for the Boston Marathon for seven years. ''I like feeling that I am helping people.''

This story ran on page W07 of the Boston Globe on 06/27/99.
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