The holiday season has now come and gone, and I haven’t posed an update since the day before Halloween. I have talked to a few different people that are not from the area, since then. There were a couple people that were “passing through” or in the area for other things. Doug, from Texas was driving down the interstate and keyed up on the repeater. We talked for a short time, and left it at that. Robert, from Bismarck was also passing through, and we talked for a bit. He and I realized that he was one of the VEs that was there when I passed my test, last summer.
Besides talking to the “normal” locals (using that term loosely, hihi), I have recently had QSOs with a couple other people from the area. A few days ago, Randall, from Bismarck, was actually getting into the local repeater from about 70 or 80 miles away. We talked for a while, before saying 73s. For such a long distance to the repeater, I heard him loud and clear. He told me he was using a vertical (not sure on the wattage) to hit it. I would have expected that he would be using a yagi to cover that distance, but I was wrong.
Another recent contact that I’ve had (a few of them, actually) is a newly licensed amateur in the area. Austin is very young, compared to some of the others around here, and that’s actually pretty exciting to me! From the things that we’ve talked about, he seems really interested in radio. That’s something that you don’t find a lot of, these days. I’m not going to blame the lack of interest of most other “younger” people on electronics, because in all actuality a lot of those electronics were made possible by radio amateurs. It’s nice when the ones that have an interest in how it works get into it, and really begin to realize the new things that are out there, and that there’s a lot of new stuff on the way. Some of the amazing new radio technology that is right around the corner will become the future of radio, and 99% of the population doesn’t realize where it’s going.
Twenty years from now, the average hamshack will be able to do things that seem unthinkable, now.