Dusting off my amateur radio set
Looking for a lockdown diversion, Nick Redmayne rigged up his boyhood transceiver to hit the waves
‘Golf Six Papa Quebec Whisky. Hi, Nick. This is Helio. You’re five and seven here in Boa Vista, Brazil…” Grinning like a small boy, for a moment, the spirit-sapping constraints of Covid fell away. Ricocheting between ionised layers of the upper atmosphere, our brief conversation wasn’t beholden to tech giants or telecoms companies. Over almost 5,000 miles we’d shared a language of modest experimentation and innovation. Using an Eighties vintage transceiver and a homemade antenna, I’d escaped lockdown. Kind of.
Since my father rescued a Forties’ Ecko valve wireless and brought it home as a gift when I was 13, I’d been fascinated by radio. As the set’s glowing valves warmed up, shortwave signals from Cold War Europe had filled my bedroom. From Radio Tirana, I learnt about Five Year Plans, overfulfilled quotas and Marxistleninist dialectic. I’d heard East Germany’s “numbers woman” broadcasting monotone streams of coded messages to communist spies. These contrasted with brash, marshal renditions of Yankee Doodle from the Voice of America. Reassuringly, from Bush House, nation spoke peace unto nation on the BBC World Service.
Interest ignited, I decided that I had to get on the air, too, and the way to achieve this lay through amateur radio, a hobby that even in the Eighties seemed preserved in aspic; an object of ridicule for my schoolmates and remembered only in the context of Tony Hancock by adults. Ill-advisedly eschewing my O-levels for evening classes, a kindly BBC engineer helped me navigate the radio amateur’s examination. After six weeks, G6PQW was licensed, legal and ready to go live.
Except it never really happened. A tumult of adolescent disconnects intervened, followed by a tidal drift
‘Powered by an old car battery, calls have stretched to Japan and the US’
towards London common among northern lads, and an itinerant life of bedsits and pokey flats in and around the capital. Travel became a career, first selling it, later publicising it, and finally writing about it. However, we move in circles. Before Bush House was vacated by the BBC World Service in 2012, I was able to visit the studios to record pieces for From Our Own Correspondent.
Fast-forward to 2020. Not the best year for anyone and certainly not for travel journalism. Back in Northumberland, I had time on my hands. Instead of regularly heading to the airport for a heady fix of otherness, I was eking out exotica from a weekly shop at Lidl. Looking for diversion, I wrested my longforgotten Eighties’ radio transmitter from among under-stairs detritus. Having survived my wife’s regular silent threats of eviction, the dormant steel box seemed in good order. I gathered various other necessary components, missing bits arriving courtesy of ebay, and decamped to the garden workshop.
Antenna design, given limited garden space and proximity of neighbours, entailed stealth technology worthy of Area 51. A beer keg, plumbing waste pipe, speaker cable and a handy cherry tree provided a very British solution. At least I thought so. “What the hell is that?” said my wife.
“It’s sculptural,” I said, pointing to the 16 radial wires fanning out from the base of a bendy, slightly off-vertical 15-foot pipe dangling from the tree.
“Antony Gormley would be proud. And it’s a conversation piece.”
Responses to further objections were fudged, and anyhow it was getting dark.
When everything was connected, antenna trimmed and tuned, power supply switched on, I put out a speculative first call to a Russian amateur station outside Moscow. Astonishingly, for me, they replied. In my mid-50s, I’d finally become a ham (as amateur radio operators are selfdeprecatingly known).
Over the following days and weeks, I tweaked the station set-up, erected new antennas, exercised my credit card on a more modern transmitter and, ensconced in the shed late at night, spoke to radio enthusiasts in more than 40 countries. Generous Italians patiently suffered my crimes against their language, inviting me to visit and try their olive oil when “this bloody virus is finished”. Others, too, extended a voice of friendship, from Corsica, Lithuania, Sweden and beyond. As my daughter reported: “Well, Dad’s discovered amateur radio and we’ve not seen him since.”
During the roller-coaster of lockdowns, I hauled gear on to hilltops – to make contacts and collect points in the Summits on the Air competition, which encourages hams to transmit from high points around the world – bounced conversations off satellites, and received digital images from the International Space Station. When possible, I’ve headed out to the coast, where proximity to the sea enhances signals. Powered by an old car battery my transmissions have stretched to Japan and the US.
“So, you’re using a fishing pole, a homemade wire antenna and 50 watts?” asked a vaguely incredulous American whose own antennas rivalled those of GCHQ, while pumping out enough power for a small village.
And there lies part of the satisfaction, in effecting an independent solution with what’s available. That said, not everyone gets it. Once, while struggling to erect the fishing pole antenna in an unfavourable wind, a passer-by inquired what I was doing.
“Why not just ring them up?” she asked and walked off.
In an activity that I’d always assumed to be in decline, on the air it’s apparent that I’m not the only one to rediscover amateur radio as a conduit unaffected by social distancing. Steve Thomas, general manager of the Radio Society of Great Britain, reports: “At the beginning of the pandemic, we launched an unprecedented campaign with the NHS called ‘Get on the air to care’. This has provided support for current radio amateurs, inspiration for those who want to return to amateur radio and a new path via remote invigilation exams for over 2,750 to pass their foundation licence as well as over 1,000 to progress to the intermediate or full licences.”
There are currently 75,000 amateur radio enthusiasts in the UK. Though it’s easy to spend thousands, basic transmitters are available for under £200 and kits can be constructed for even less, while an effective homemade antenna costs about the same as a takeaway pizza. Of course, all of life is out there on the air. Contest stations, who don’t want to chat, but collect callsigns at a rate of knots. Technical experts whose wont is to explore the rabbit holes of theoretical physics and challenge the finer points of each other’s knowledge. Grumpy old men who complain about bad backs, and others content to just moan endlessly about the weather. However, every so often there’s a meeting of minds, some cultural exchange and the beginnings of a friendship.
There’s no doubt that recent times have diminished society. Our faces are hidden by masks and even gazes are often averted as we avoid each other on the street. Instead of bringing us together, social media’s echo chambers appear adept at promoting prejudice and sowing division. Random interactions have become less frequent as we’re discouraged from leaving the insular safety of our own homes.
Sometimes not only is it good to talk, it’s good to talk to someone new.