What do exploding hi-fi sets, singed hair and citywide brownouts have in common? They're all results of the author's early attempts to conjure up some RF wizardry.

A couple of Saturday mornings ago, I took a trip down to the local "Hams-R-Smart" radio store and discovered, to my delight, the latest super-duper, all-bells-and-whistles, HF-plus-Everything radio. I was thoroughly intrigued fiddling around with this "Intelligent Digitally Enhanced HF Communications System." It had things like "state-of-the-art IF-stage DSP," choice of "LEM or SPAC Noise Reduction" methods employing something called "statistical correlation algorithms," digital auto-notches, and a host of other things that sounded like a whole lot of fun, but are really hard for guys like me to figure out.

As I randomly pushed buttons and tweaked knobs hieroglyphically labeled "BEAT CANCEL," "TX EQ," "PROC" and "MONI," I had this eerie feeling I was being observed by some mystical higher power. I turned to investigate and found a little 10-year-old kid standing behind me who, evidently, was thoroughly impressed by my skillful prowess with the rig. "Hey mister?" he asked. "How exactly does digital signal processing work anyway?"

Back when I was a kid, there was this unwritten rule of the universe which said that all children should never, ever ask any adult any question requiring specific information--especially if the questions were complicated and hard to answer.

"It, er...well, you see, kid," I stammered. "It, uh...it's digital...and it processes signals kind of like that...digitally, I mean." He gave me the same critical glare my wife often does when she grills me about why I haven't mowed the lawn yet. "Look kid," I said. "It's just magic...radio magic, okay?" I hoped he would let it go at that. After all, if that's an answer that's good enough for me as an adult, why shouldn't it be for him as a kid?

His proceeded to grill me with all the finesse of Perry Mason, entrapping his witness in a web of ignorance and deceit. "Are you really a ham?" he asked. "I mean...a licensed one?"

"Advanced class," I snapped back, hoping to sound superior enough to scare him away.

"Oh," he said. "I'm an Extra."

Then he turned and made the loudest public announcement across the sales floor I've ever heard in my whole life. "See Stevie," he yelled to some goofy looking kid with really thick glasses. "I told you he wouldn't know!"

If I had to give that kid a signal report, it would have to have been a solid 5 by 29, although I still think a solid 2-by-4 would've worked just as well.

The Young Engineer Makes a Shocking Discovery

Don't get me wrong. I'm basically a humble guy who can admit that just because I've got an Advanced class license, it doesn't mean I've got to deny the probability that all these electrical, electronic and radio doo-dads really work by magic. Radio magic seems sensible to me. Certainly, it's a whole heck of a lot easier to use that explanation than wrestle with things like capacitance, inductance and reactance. You see, magic makes life simpler and radio magic makes radio life simpler. I learned that lesson years ago through three crucial events in my life.

The first event occurred was when I was only nine years old. I had just completed a fourth-grade book report on Thomas Alva Edison. His work in practical electricity so inspired me that I chose to take up electrical engineering as a hobby. Opening the "E" volume of my Young American Encyclopedia set, I turned to the article on "Electricity." It described electrons and their flow from negative potential to positive, positive holes that migrated from positive to negative, current measured in amps, something about coulombs and joules, and some other thing about a constant factor of K, whatever that was.

"Too cloudy," I convinced myself. "If I'm going to understand this stuff, I've got to see it in action." So, I borrowed my dad's extension cord, cut off one end with a pair of my mom's best sewing scissors and plugged the other end into the wall outlet in the den. What happened next can only be described as the biggest, bluest spark I've ever seen in my whole life. It shot out the end of my dad's cord, fired across the room, hit my sister's hi-fi, and generated so much smoke that the fire department had to be called onto the scene by my overly excited father. The lesson I learned that day was that electricity works by magic and you shouldn't mess around with it.

...Like Depth Charges off a Warship

Second, after five years of detention and forced restriction from touching anything that could be plugged into a wall outlet, I decided to teach myself electronics by building an AM radio from scratch. There was this nifty little book in the public library that had all kinds of schematics for the electronics hobbyist. I chose the "Easy to Construct, Three-Tube Superheterodyne" one-day project.

Seventeen weeks and 12-and-a-half pounds of solder later, I finally completed my radio. During each day of grueling construction, my father would come in, cast a doubtful eye upon my creation, and ask, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Of course I did, despite the fact that my radio didn't look exactly like the photos of the petite little model in the manual. Theirs was about the size of an envelope box and mine, when finished, was slightly bigger than a really, really large mailbox.

Before leaving for work that day, my dad instructed me not to do anything stupid like plugging it in until later that evening after he could move my sister's hi-fi out of the way. It was too much to ask an inquisitive inventor like me to wait, though, so once he left I put a plan into action. I asked my sister to help me test that baby out.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked hesitantly.

"Well, I'm going to have to stand over here, behind the hi-fi," I said. "And once I plug it in, I need you to turn on that black knob there and see if anything happens."

"Why don't you turn it on?" she asked.

"Because I've gotta stand by with the fire extinguisher...just in case." It took a good 30 minutes of arguing and a promise to buy her a really nice, expensive present if anything went wrong, before she finally agreed to be my guinea pi...I mean, to assist. After positioning myself well away from the radio, extinguisher ready in hand, I slowly inserted the plug into the electrical socket. No big, blue spark. That was a good sign.

"Ready?" I asked Sis. She nodded, took a deep breath, leaned forward toward the rig, and cautiously turned the "PWR/VOL" knob on. "What's it doing?" I asked.

"Nothing," she answered. "It's not doing anything."

"How about adjusting the tuner knob?"

"Which one's that?" she asked.

"It's the one without the electrical tape wrapped around it. It sticks out the most," I answered.

The combination of electricity, electronics and radio: shocking stuff! [Mike Uhall, NL7WM, Photo illustration]

To this day, I'm not exactly sure what she grabbed. Yet, in all the ensuing excitement (she was jumping madly up and down, the mixed look of anger and panic in her eyes, her hair smoking and curlers ejecting like depth charges off a warship) I did the noble and heroic thing: I fired the full load of CO2 all over her.

The lesson learned here was that electronics, like electricity, can produce some magical moments in life, and you shouldn't mess around with it either.

The Magical "Impact Adjustment"

After making the final payment on that '68 Corvette I had to buy my sister, I finally scraped together enough money to marry my wife, and we moved into our own home. Here, at last, man of my own house, master of my own fate, I could freely pursue my interests, including the magical world of Amateur Radio, without fear of detention, restriction or retribution--a perfect setting for my third lesson.

My first radio was a Yaesu handheld. I eventually acquired a Kenwood HF radio and an ICOM dualband FM mobile that I use for VHF packet. All seemed to be going uncharacteristically well for me until, one day, the magic of my VHF radio quit. Nothing. No lights. No juice. No power. My power supply had developed that strange, yet familiar, odor of my sister's fried hair.

"Easy fix," I told myself, popping off the power supply's cover. "I'll get this baby repaired in no time."

Much to my surprise, this thing actually had a lot of little electronic gizmos stuck inside: little black boxy-looking doohickeys, doughnut shaped chunks of ceramic wrapped with copper wires, capacitors, resistors and a transformer nearly the size of an M-1 tank. Still, as far as I could tell, all the pieces looked okay to me, so I did what anybody who subscribes to the radio magic theory would. I gave it a few sharp raps with the butt of my screwdriver, blew into it really hard, closed it up and plugged it in to see if it was magically fixed.

As soon as I flipped the switch, all the lights in the house began to pulsate, growing dimmer and dimmer. "Uh-oh," I said to myself, having flashbacks of my sister's magical Bride-of-Frankenstein hairdo. "This can't be good."

It wasn't. I lost all power in the house; my neighbors lost theirs; the entire city of San Diego went dim for two-and-a-half days. The news media reported it as a "brownout due to unknown circumstances," but I knew what it was. It was the lesson that radio, electricity and electronics are all magic; combined they are sometimes really bad magic, and you shouldn't mess around with them too much, even if you're licensed to do so.

The Most Magical of All

My first ham radio license was a Tech Plus, and by a strange mixture of miracle and magic, I also later passed the exams for General and Advanced. It sounds impressive, I know, especially to all those folks who don't know me and are just as baffled as I am by things as esoteric as Ohm's Law. Some of them (not my dad or sister) even believe that, because I have this license, I actually know how radios, electricity and electronics work. I do, however, have an intimate understanding of Ohm's Law (E=IR). For me it means:

E very time
I mess around with electricity
R eally bad things happen.

People get zapped. Fire departments get called out. Blackouts occur. My antennas get launched off their masts into low earth orbit. NASA keeps sending me huge bills for retrieving space junk. The curt lady at the other end of the 911 emergency line calls me daily to ask if I've got plans to do anything unusual.

The real lesson is this: the simple, inclusive answer to which it eventually boils down, is that it's all magic. Electricity is magic. Electronics is more magic. And ham radios have the most magic of all. And, if you can't understand that, then perhaps you shouldn't ever mess around with it.

Michael Uhall, NL7WM, an active-duty officer in the US Navy, has been in Amateur Radio since 1991. He was first licensed while stationed on Adak Island, Alaska. He has operated from many places, including Bermuda, working mostly RTTY and digital modes. He can be reached via e-mail at mauhall@aol.com.

Previous: Hams Ready as Texas Coast Goes on Alert for Hurricane Claudette

Next: California Governor Signs Amateur Antenna Bill