Guy Fiola tries to make another contact for the Panorama Land Amateur Radio Team. 

Operators from Tri-County area meet at annual event

BY JAMIE HENNEMAN
S-E Staff Reporter

In the dark, starry nights that bring a kind of calm to Eastern Washington, it is possible to ex¬perience a place where the larger world is far away and the peaked mountains hold the tan¬gible border between here and someplace larger and busier.
But the distance between here and “out there” can be much smaller for people like ham ra¬dio operator Wilse Morgan, who with the click of a switch can contact people from all over the world from his “radio room” in Rice. Along with making inter¬national contacts, Morgan has even talked with astronauts in the International Space Station.
“A lot of the time, you can get on and do some ‘rag chewing,’ which is what we call small talk,” said Morgan, a 57-year ham radio operator who was re¬cently inducted into the Ham Radio Hall of Fame. “It can be a lot of fun.”
For the ham radio operator, the world can be as far away or as close as you desire by simply saying your “call sign” on the radio and waiting for someone else to respond.
“I think it is exciting because it is like fishing,” said ham op¬erator Steff Mallory. “You put your call sign out there and hopefully someone will pick up.”
Mallory and Morgan were re¬cently at the Panorama Land Amateur Radio field day near Chewelah where operators gath¬ered from the Tri-County area to socialize, as well as participate in an international radio com¬petition where radio clubs at¬tempt to make the most “con¬tacts” or verified responses from another operator, in a 24-hour period.
The club also conducted test¬ing for ham radio licenses, graduating seven  participants. Although the requirements for a ham license used to be pretty strict, they have loosened up over the years in order to pro¬mote participation in the hobby, said Morgan.
“You used to have to do five words a minute in Morse Code in order to pass the test, but a few years ago they changed the requirements,” said Morgan.
Now hopeful testers only have to answer 35 different questions related to ham radio.

More than a hobby

For many ham radio opera¬tors, their participation in ham radio is not only a hobby, but a service. Ham radio operator Sam Jenkins works as an ARES (Ametuer Radio Emergency Services) operator to potentially help local emergency services if conventional communication via cell phone or land lines went down.
“If there was no power and no cell phones so emergency serv¬ices can communicate, then that is when we come in,” he said. “When all else fails, ham radio still works.”
Ham operators can site vari¬ous instances where conven¬tional communication failed, in¬cluding during Hurricane Ka¬trina when cell phones stopped working due to an overload of the system.
Operators said there have also been instances where fiber optic cables have been damaged in some way, taking out various forms of communication. It is in those instances that ham radio operators can provide an im¬portant link for the community by relaying information between emergency service providers like the Sheriff’s Department, fire departments and other entities.
“There are six active satellites devoted to ham radio right now, which gives us a pretty good range for communication,” said Morgan. “We can get a lot done.”
The Panorama Land Amateur Radio Club meets the third Fri¬day of the month at the Hearth and Home building in Colville at 7:30 p.m.
For more information, visit www.qsl.net/k7jar/index.html. or call 738-4248.