What do you say to two guys in a public park with two huge antennas and an improvised hut in the middle?
“Are you trying to talk to the aliens?"
We got that one about three times. The most common inquiry was, “umm, I have to ask, what are you guys doing?" We got that one about twenty times.
Last weekend my pal Joel (W4LL) and me (N0JDC) operated a ham radio station for ARRL Field Day in a park near my house.
If you’ve ever hung around an amateur radio operator (a/k/a ham), you may have heard something like this:
Another ham might respond:
A non-ham, who’s a pal and a good sport about ham stories, would respond:
The average non-ham, however, would respond:
Truth is, hams have their own made-up language, kind of like Esperanto but it sounds deceptively like English. But the layperson or ham-wannabe can learn to speak ham (or at least comprehend some of it) with a little help.
