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CommunityDecember 10, 2024

Members of the Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Club talk about the ways they pursue radio.

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Henry Clark doesn’t remember the title of the movie, but he remembers the scene: A character who had been kidnapped used Morse code on a ham radio, known formally as an amateur radio, in the car he was trapped in to send a message to his friends, who then rescued him. Clark saw the movie as a teenager, and several years later as a freshman at St. Louis Community College in 1970, had an opportunity to help found an amateur radio club. There, he learned Morse code and earned his novice amateur radio operating license, beginning a lifelong passion with ham radio.

Highlights from his lifetime of being an amateur radio operator include the time he built a radio with a tuna fish can and communicated with someone in New York on it. He also helped provide security for actress Mackenzie Phillips in St. Louis. And he has talked with people in Europe, New Zealand and Hawaii, to name a few places with which his amateur radio has helped him connect.

But his passion within the amateur radio field is building antennas.

“Imagine a piece of wire and then this little thing here on it you can talk several thousand miles away. You know, that’s amazing,” Clark says. “Or, sitting in my basement, chatting with someone on the other side of the world.”

Clark has been a member of the Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Club since around the year 2010, after he moved to Jackson. The club has been around continuously at least since 1958, the earliest documentation of the club’s existence. The meetings, held at the Jackson Civic Center on the first Monday of every month, are open to anyone interested in learning more about amateur radio. There are approximately 60 members, although there are more ham radio operators in the area who are not a part of the club.

Larry Mohundro, who says he enjoys the conversational aspect of amateur radio, had an interest in amateur radio operation as a teenager but didn’t make time for the hobby throughout his working years. He got into the hobby during retirement, thanks to a former coworker who connected him with the club. Now, he serves as the president of the Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Club.

“It’s to build a radio community,” Mohundro says of the club’s purpose. “If people need help, they can go to other club members. ‘Cause if you know somebody, if you don’t know how to answer a question, you’ve got somebody that can [answer the question], most likely. So it’s a feeling of belonging and a feeling of, ‘If I need help, I can get it.’”

Amateur radio utilizes the radio frequency spectrum for non-commercial communication. It enables people to talk and send text, image and data communications all over the world; participate in contests; and provide communication during times of emergency. After going through storm spotter training courses, amateur radio operators can also assist the National Weather Service in data collection during storm warnings. It is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

There are three levels of amateur radio license administered by the FCC: technician, general and amateur extra. Each level requires the operator to pass a test of 35 or 50 questions, depending on the level of licensure, and each ascending licensure gives the operator additional bands and frequency privileges.

To operate an amateur radio, one must have a license. Each amateur radio operator is assigned a call sign by the FCC, which is used to identify an individual ham radio operator. They also indicate the level of licensure through the number of letters and numbers in the call sign, as well as tell the amateur radio operator’s geographic location by the number in the call sign. Every 10 minutes while talking with someone, an amateur radio operator must give their call sign for identification purposes.

As each amateur radio operator has their own call sign, they each enjoy a different aspect of the pastime. Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Club member Kirk Barks, who enjoys learning the technology aspect of the hobby, says he participates to “keep his brain fresh.” He first got into amateur radio operation in the 1980s while teaching friends who were ham radio operators how to fly remote-control airplanes.

Patty Chiles initially earned her amateur radio license because she wanted to be able to communicate on the radio with her husband Ernie Chiles, who has been a member of the Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Club since 1960, serving as president first in 1961. Patty Chiles got her technician license, and then, at the encouragement of her husband, earned her general license. Then, they motivated each other as they got their amateur extra licenses, the highest license.

Patty Chiles is motivated by the competition and wallpaper, or earning awards to hang on the wall. She earned her first award by making contact with an amateur radio operator in every state of the U.S. After that, she decided she wanted to make contact with a ham radio operator in every county in her home state of Kansas. Then, she didn’t stop: She made contact with an amateur radio operator in every county in the U.S., which is more than 3,000 counties. The project took her approximately seven years.

“That's my foray into ham radio,” Patty Chiles says. “Just wanting to talk to [my husband] on the radio, and then it moved into talking to the world.”

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Ernie Chiles, who also loves participating in contests, says some of the most interesting conversations he’s had via amateur radio include talking with people in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, talking with someone who worked on automation at Disney World and talking with a mining engineer in South Africa. He says conversations often start off by talking about the weather and then move into the type of equipment they’re using to operate the radio and what they do for a living.

No matter what an amateur radio operator is motivated by — public safety and communication, recreation, or building with the technology — they are all in. And the Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Club is a community in which they can continue to expand their knowledge base with other like-minded individuals.

“It teaches you geography, it teaches you [how to relate] with people,” Clark says. “You can meet people all over the world, all strata of life — doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, the whole gambit. And they’re all the same.”

Speak ham

Ham radio operation has a vocabulary all its own. Here are a few key terms to get you started:

Elmer: A mentor who helps new ham radio operators learn about amateur radio.

Fox hunt: A ham radio recreational activity in which a low-power transmitter is hidden and teams of amateur radio operators try to find it using radio technology. This also serves to ensure their equipment is up-to-date in case they are called on to aid in communication during an emergency.

Ragchewers: Ham radio operators who have long conversations with others on the radio.

Silent key: A ham radio operator who has passed away.

Wallpaper: The awards won and collected by achieving different feats on the radio, such as talking with someone in every state in the U.S.

Want to get involved?

The Southeast Missouri Amateur Radio Club meets from 6:30 to 8 p.m. the first Monday of each month — or the second Monday of each month if the first Monday is a holiday — at the Jackson Civic Center, 381 E. Deerwood Dr. in Jackson. The next meeting is on Monday, Jan. 6. For more information, visit semoarc.com.

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