It must be magic. I can say something out loud in my home and someone miles away can hear what I'm saying. This must have been the thought of people 100 years ago when Marconi transmitted a morse code signal over the Atlantic Ocean via radio for the first time.
What is magic to me, however, is amateur or ham radio. I've been involved with ham radio for about five years now. I am not a "ham" in the sense that I build my own equipment like amateurs did years ago, and some still do today. I am a ham because I am fascinated with the art and the science of communications, and I like to talk. I have met hundreds of interesting people through my involvement in amateur radio and look forward to meeting many more.
Someone once asked my why I would want to talk to people I'd never met. It's a good question, and I guess the only answer is that I want to talk to them simply because we have never met. How else am I to learn about them? I want to learn what their lives are like and what they do for a living. What is their country like and what is their town like? Sometimes it's as simple a reason as "can my radio reach all the way to where this other station is?"
What is magic about radio? I have studied physics and I understand the basics of how electromagnetic waves travel through space. I understand that radio communications is all explainable with a series of mathematical expressions. And, for the most part, I understand the math too.
The magic comes from the fact that I can hang some wire antennas off a tree in the back yard and the chimney of my home and actually meet people in some far away place. I rarely know exactly who I will get, just that there is probably someone else doing the same thing in some place I've never heard of.
Every amateur radio operator can probably recall the first contact they had with a far off country. This is called DX. My first contact was with a station in Sofia, Bulgaria. The man's call sign was LZ1QI. It happened in the fall of 1991 from a friend's station. I had just had my license for a few months and didn't have a radio capable of long distance communications. For months I had talked to "local" stations within a hundred miles or so of my home. One weekend afternoon I went over to my friend's house and was tuning around on his big radio with the hundred knobs and buttons when I heard a Bulgarian station calling for any contacts. My buddy said, "Go ahead and give him a try".
He helped me adjust the radio and I gave my callsign "N1KNH". Somehow the magic happened and I heard a voice from thousands of miles away say, "N1KNH this is LZ1QI, good evening. You have a strong signal here in Sofia. My name is shhhhhh." Static cut him off.
I said his callsign, then my own and told him my name was Jeff, spelling it out phonetically, Julliette Echo Foxtrot Foxtrot. I asked for his name again and he told me. My heart was pounding 150 beats per minute as I told him this was my first DX contact and could I please have his address so I could send him a confirmation card. He told me his mailing address and after a couple tries, I correctly repeated it back to him. I didn't know what else to say so I signed off and thanked him for the contact. The whole conversation lasted less than a minute but I still remember it to this day.
My buddy had helped copy down the address and congratulated me on my first long distance contact. He had numerous cards on the wall attesting to many DX contacts but I knew he was excited for me. It was a milestone in my ham radio career.
I sent the Bulgarian a card the next day and about a month or two later, got one from him. I was as proud of that card as I was of my ham radio license from the FCC. I still have it today and recall what a thrill those few seconds had been to me.
Since then I have talked to hundreds of stations all over the world. I have confirmed contacts in about 70 different countries and 48 different states. Not a lot, but enough to know a little of the thrill of finding a new country or state. Many of these contacts have been rewarding and I've learned a lot about other parts of the world. None, however, will compare to the chest pounding excitement of that first time you hear your callsign repeated by someone from thousands of miles away.