If at first you don't succeed, call for help. Her husband and a local radio club helped the author rediscover the connections that only Amateur Radio can provide.

For ten years I held an Advanced class Amateur Radio license and never had an HF QSO. Now, for the first time, I'm on the air. It took the help of others and a personal crisis to get me going again. Here is my story.

Katy, in her N1JDD ham shack, shows off her new QSL cards. [Photos by the author]

My father was a ham, so I grew up with the sound of my father working his radio. During the Vietnam War we lived on an air force base in Okinawa. He helped GIs talk with their families back in the states.

Ten years ago I decided to get my Amateur Radio license. I bought a $25 shortwave receiver and spent hours listening to it. I studied and took courses and exams for about six months. Finally, with an Advanced class license in hand, I was champing at the bit to get a rig. I spent Saturdays in ham radio stores looking at transceivers, antennas, power supplies, Morse code keys, H-Ts, and antenna tuners. It looked like a jumble of equipment. I wanted to just get on the air.

Finally I went to a local hamfest and forked out $100 for a tube-type transceiver and $25 for a G5RV wire antenna. The radio drifted badly and I had problems receiving much of anything. Soon after I brought it home, the transceiver died. A couple of storms later my antenna blew down. That was the end of my ham radio career--that is, until recently.

Bad News and a New Start

I kept my license up-to-date, intending to make another attempt at the hobby some day. In March of 2001 I was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. During the next eight months I underwent chemotherapy and radiation. It seemed as though the terrible side effects would never end. They eventually did, though. For a year I documented my cancer journey in an online journal. A fellow on-line journalist Peter Wang, KF5ND, wrote about his ham radio volunteer experiences in his journal. When I read his stories, I imagined him rushing up to some fallen runner and calling for an ambulance on his 2-meter H-T. It seemed like a really nice thing to be able to do. One day Peter wrote a message in my journal: "How would you like it if some people from the Framingham (Massachusetts) Amateur Radio Association came to your house sometime and set up an antenna and radio?"

Through Peter I met a man named Bob Hess, W1RH, president of the Framingham Amateur Radio Association. Bob explained that some club members were experienced with antennas and would help me set up my station. I wasn't sure if Bob was for real or not, but decided to take a chance and pursue the purchase of equipment. After all, memories of my cancer diagnosis reminded me that life should be lived for today and not tomorrow.

My husband John and I decided to go to the ham radio store. I remembered it from years back. The equipment there still confused me. Things hadn't changed one bit in that respect. The salesman showed us some transceivers, antennas, and antenna tuners. I asked him to show us the H-Ts.

"We'll Take It"

"We'll take it," said John looking at one of the 2-meter H-Ts. John looked at me. "I don't know. Do we really want to spend the money?" I asked him. All of a sudden I had second thoughts about getting involved with ham radio. The H-T was $120. Did I really want to spend money on myself? Would it be wise to spend a lot of money on radio equipment and then kick the bucket? I might have a week left to live, or a year, or ten.

"Of course we want to buy it!" John said. "We drove all the way here, and I'm not going to walk out without buying something!" We bought the H-T.

With the help of two of John's co-workers--Pete Thompson, N3EVL, and Ellis Clark, KC1BC-- and Bob Hess, Peter Wang and an informative Website, I decided on an ICOM IC-718. I also bought a 250 Hz filter, a DSP board, an antenna tuner, power supply, and manual key. After bringing the equipment home, I put it on the dining room table and looked at it. This wasn't like buying a computer where all of the cables you need are given to you.

"Well, if the Framingham Amateur Radio Association doesn't help me put all of this together, it's going to end up in the big ham radio heaven where my gear from ten years ago went," I thought.

A week after purchasing the equipment, three people from FARA appeared at my door: Bob, W1RH; Peter Simpson, KA1AXY and Martin Bayes, AA1ON. It was an unseasonably warm day for January in New England. Earlier in the week, N3EVL told my husband that one of the basic characteristics of a ham is that he does his antenna work in the middle of winter snowstorms. Oh well, we got the middle of the winter part right.

Peter, N3ELV, and Bob, W1RH, walked around the yard, looking at the trees. "Yup," Peter said, nodding and rubbing his hands together. "This is going to be fun!" he exclaimed. He went to his car and came back with a pile of wire--a G5RV antenna that FARA was donating to me. With Bob at one end of the wire and Peter at the other end, they walked around the yard measuring distances and angles. They decided upon a NW-SE orientation for the antenna.

"Now, how are we going to route it into the house?" Bob asked. I nodded in agreement. I looked up at him. He didn't look anything like I imagined when I talked with him on the phone. On the other hand, I supposed he didn't expect to see an almost-bald lady either. Peter went down into the basement. "How about if we route it through here? It would just take a hole in the floor and one into the house from the outside," he said.

An Antenna Goes Up

Peter Simpson, KA1AXY, makes a perfect shot. This high-tech antenna-raising device put the G5RV 45 feet up in the air.

I looked at John. He didn't seem fazed at the idea of having holes drilled in the house. "Great--no problem." I said. It took them the entire day to put up the antenna.

At mid-day, we drove to RadioShack for some miscellaneous items. Martin sat up front with me and told me about how he has talked with 331 of 335 possible countries. Martin and Peter talked about PSK-31 and APRS. At RadioShack, with their help, I bought the ingredients needed to attach the key and antenna tuner to my rig. Did the phone plug from the key to the rig have to be monaural or stereo? I had no idea. We bought one of each.

We arrived back at my house and had lunch. Martin picked up my ARRL's Wire Antenna Classics book and pointed out an article on the G5RV. Martin explained that the G5RV is designed in such a way that it can receive signals on multiple bands. After lunch, Peter and Martin raised the antenna. They drilled holes and routed the feed-line through the house to the spot we had selected for our station. Then we sat down with my IC-718 manual, a voltmeter, a wire stripper and the two audio cables. Next we worked on wiring. "I say red and black wires," said Martin. "Me too," said Peter. I could tell these two had done this before. I stripped the wires, and Peter and I used the voltmeter to figure out the proper configuration. I was flabbergasted that these people could set up a ham station with such apparent ease.

Updating On My Own--No Smoke!

On a Saturday night a couple of weeks later I put the transceiver and the two extra computer boards I had ordered (a DSP board and a 250 Hz filter) on the dining room table. As a software engineer I know about static safety, and I have a little experience using soldering irons. I figured I was about as qualified as anyone else to install these boards myself. I went downstairs and dug out my ten-year-old $5 soldering iron. The side of the iron was concave from use, and only one spot heated up. I had to hold it at odd angles for the heating element to make contact with the correct part. Most of the other components were miniaturized, so I could barely see them. I prayed that I wasn't soldering the wrong parts. After I put the transceiver back together I turned it on and crossed my fingers. Would it smoke? It didn't. I tested the new features for a couple of minutes. They appeared to work, so I went to bed.

I tossed and turned in bed for five or ten minutes and then decided I wasn't going to get any sleep until I put in more time with the radio to make sure it was working. Finding a quiet frequency, I keyed my microphone to tune the antenna. I turned the antenna tuner knobs and nothing happened. I tried the same thing on several other bands. Same thing. "Oh great," I thought. "I hosed my transmitter with the soldering iron".

The next day I programmed two frequencies into the transceiver memory in preparation for my first QSO with Peter. I was worried that the transmitter was busted and was depressed that my second attempt at being a ham was going to be like the first. At exactly 3:30 PM I heard a faint voice calling my call sign. Out of millions of radio signals in the air, my transceiver had grabbed the one from Texas intended for me in Massachusetts! Our signals were weak, but we managed to hear each other well enough to have a really nice exchange.

Martin Bayes, AA1ON, and Bob Hess, W1RH, prepare to assemble Katy's station.

Peter Wang, KF5ND, and I talked for about 10 to 15 minutes and then began to say our goodbyes. Another ham broke in and said he wanted to talk to the "YL" (me). I wondered, a little apprehensively, what he wanted to talk with me about. It was Vern Kaspar, W9FAM, from Indiana. His signal was so clear that he seemed to be next door. He played a recording of my own transmission so that I could hear what I sounded like from his end. It was great fun to hear myself speaking over the air. Some other hams heard our exchange and came into our conversation.

Around the World in an Hour and a Half

When people stopped breaking in, he called "CQ Europe." His signal was so strong that many people replied. By the end of about one and a half hours I had talked with Miguel, EA6OC, in Spain; John Lush, VO1CJ, in Newfoundland; Ade, G0KSB, in the UK; Antonio Martins, CT1BC, in Portugal; Claus, OZ3ABU, in Denmark; Tony Wright, M3ADW, in England and Les McCullough, GI4RMA, in Northern Ireland. I was amazed. It was as if this man I didn't know anything about had taken my hand and traipsed around the world with me. It was an unbelievable experience.

Cancer is a horror, but it's also a gift. Two weeks after my first chemotherapy infusion I lost my hair. I looked in the trashcan and saw the innocence of my youth lying beside my fallen hair. A new person was born in me who was older and wiser. When I walked out of my last radiation treatment on January 2, 2002, I looked up at the sky and breathed the fresh air as if for the first time. There's beauty in living and beauty in even the tiniest acts of kindness that people do for each other. My oncology nurses, radiation technicians, and now--back in the real world--these Amateur Radio operators, have taught me that true heroism has its roots in kindness and compassion. I have grown to realize how incredible life can be and what a joy it is to know people like these wonderful Amateur Radio operators who helped me accomplish a ten-year dream.

Katy Sharko, N1JDD, of Sudbury, Massachusetts, comes from a family of Amateur Radio operators. Her father was a ham, and her oldest brother and husband are also hams. Katy has been a software engineer for 20 years and currently works for Cisco Systems, Inc. She is an engineer at heart, and is happiest in front of her computer or puttering in her ham shack. Her interests are traffic handling, doing volunteer work with ARES, PSK-31, building ham accessories, and ragchewing on 2 meters and HF. Her most recent project is a computer-to-transceiver interface, which she is building under the tutelage of Peter Simpson, KA1AXY. You can reach Katy at n1jdd@arrl.net.

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