How did you become involved in the radio hobby?

[jasdon23c]

I became involved in the radio hobby during my childhood days with curiosity!

 

[robertmac]

I think I may have answered this under an amateur radio thread. But here goes:
Back in the days, living out side of the big cities in Alberta, my grandparents had an AM/Shortwave radio receiver. When the stations in the big cities had to cut power output at dusk, I would often turn the dial to see what other AM stations could be heard. Most from the US. Shortwave stations were very active at that time as well. Can't really say I head any amateurs.
One year I got a small portable transistor radio for Christmas and could pick up AM stations again. A few of my friends and I would compare what AM stations we picked up at night. We did have a list of AM radio stations [can't remember where this list came from] but we would check off the stations listed as we heard them.
As I got older, my dad and I would do a lot of fishing and hunting. So we bought a couple of GRS/CB walkie talkies. While using them in town one day, someone started talking to us. We then found out a neighbour was selling mobile GRS/CB radios. So my dad bought one for his car. My mother and I would listen on the walkies and could hear others talking with my dad so the next step was putting a base station in the house. This got me into listening to other channels, but only had 6 at that time. Then we upgraded to a radio with 8 channels, then 23, then 40 SSB. But with the crap that started with truckers taking over CB and people with amps., we ended up turning the CBs off and bought a scanner. I believe it was a Radio Shack and only had about 20 frequencies. But in those days that was more than enough. And as technology improved, scanners improved. But then came digital, and most of the interesting stuff was digital. I then got into amateur radio. Then digital scanners came out so started to listen more to the scanners again. So will continue until everything goes encrypted.

 

[pb_lonny]

Here is the link, please share it around as much as possible: Launceston Analytical Radio Scanning : Stories - How I got in to radio

 

[77Impala]

Always loved listing to someone and/or music.
Young age listening to AM radio.
Modified a AM radio to last longer on the battery and pulled in more stations at night.
Got into listening to FM, then cassette, followed by CD's
First police/ham/weather station monitoring radio was a modified FM radio to hear on the 2 meter through 159MHz for local police.
BC210 was my very first scanning scanner.
Upgraded a few times and even had another BC210 for almost a year.
Have played on the CB but do not like the obnoxious crowd that likes to cause trouble for the rest of the people on there.
Last summer upgraded into ham radio, now a General class and moving up to Extra hopefully before the end of June if not sooner.

 

[jmp883]

I was always interested in radio. Started out with a pocket transistor AM/FM radio in the early 1970's when I was 5 or 6 years old. Even at that age I enjoyed tuning up and down the AM dial listening for distant stations. In my teens my mother gave me a Zenith Trans-Oceanic radio that was given to my late father (a radio station DJ) by a fan. With so many more bands to explore I would spend hours (and a lot of D-cell batteries!) at a time sitting in front of that radio.

One night I was babysitting for friends of my parents. The father was a member of the local first aid squad, but that fact wasn't exactly top on my list of things to be aware of that night. Anyway, I put the kids to bed and I'm sitting in the living room watching tv when this obnoxious set of tones goes off. I never even heard the verbal dispatch. Needless to say, it scared the crap out of me! I'm looking all through the house to find out where the tones came from when I saw a Plectron unit sitting on a shelf. It was the evening Plectron test that I had heard and it was responsible for starting my interest in scanning in the early 1980's. Because of listening to scanners I became very interested in becoming an emergency services dispatcher. I finally landed that job in 1992, 10 years after graduating high school, and am still behind the microphone 24 years later!

I was briefly into CB when I first started driving in 1982. I had both mobile and base stations but I lost interest in CB within a year or so.

In 1986 I went to broadcasting school intending to follow in my dad's footsteps. My dad passed away just before I was born, and I never knew that he was a DJ until I was in high school. I do know I had always wanted to be the guy on the radio playing music from the time I was old enough to play with a radio. Going to broadcasting school turned me off from wanting to go into commercial radio, and I as I look back I know I made the right decision. Besides, emergency service dispatching leaves me feeling like I'm really contributing to making things better for people.

In 2005 I got my Technician-class ham radio license, and a year later I upgraded to the General-class license. Ham radio is a lot of fun and I've made some great contacts around the world, in both voice and data modes.

I guess I was meant for radio.........

 

[markmatt]

for reference i am 28 years old.

Some of my very first memories as a kid were my family driving from massachusetts(and later pennsylvania) to upstate new york to visit my grandfather who has been a HAM for a very long time. I distincly remember my father, once we got over the mountains, turning on his huge brick of a radio and searching for my grandfather. they would have a brief conversation about the weather and the distance to where we were going. I always thought it was so cool. once we were at my grandfathers house it was even cooler. They lived in a pretty modest house. they had a house with 3 bedrooms, but one of thsoe bedrooms was my grandfathers ham shack. insadentally this is where me and my brother slept. I remember him showing us the equipment which we were not aloud to touch under any circomstances (it actually makes a lot of sense now that iv studied and passed my test why). he even had/still has a huge tower out back of his property. im not sure if it has a repeater on it or if its just an antenna but its at least 3 times as tall as his house.

fast forward to about two weeks ago. i get a call from my father. My Nana had not been doing well and she finally passed away at the age of 86. she was the most loving amazing person in my life and though i was crushed by it, ntohing compairs to the pain my grandfather must have been feeling. they were together since they were 16 years old. they were a prime example of true love in its purest form. the idea occured to me when we were driving back from the funeral that i should get my license and finally do what iv been thinking about doing for a long time but never had the time for. So last tuesday i started studying. by the time friday had come, i was about 50 percent through the study material. i found a test that was going to be held that saturday about half an hour away (took me an hour to get there because i got lost). so i stayed up until 4am studying until i had covered about 95 percent of the material. i took a handfull of practice tests and scored 88+ on each of them. the best one only having 2 questions wrong i believe so i took the dive. drove out, got lost, made it just in time to find the testing area in the back of a boscoves in media pa. everyone was very warm and inviting. very friendly and very happy to see someone as young as me getting involved and interested. I was pleased with the test. i looked it over and i knew every question except for maybe 1 that i was unsure of. the instructor came back after i handed my test in with a grim look on his face. got to about a foot of me and his expression exploded into a smile and extended his hand to give me a firm handshake and congradulate me saying "youve made your grandfather very happy im sure congradulations."

after my test i called my grandfather to tell him the good news. he knew i was studying but didint know i was going to take my test. i told him what happened and this whole story and he was in shock. iv never heard him so happy.

this made my day to because when i was at the funeral there was nothing i could do to fix what had happened, but this will bring him a little bit of join and we plan to set up weekly nets between him my father and myself. i cant wait.

so here i sit talking to all of you while i wait for the FCC to post my information.

 

[stingray327]

I got a Sharp CB 12 radio back in 1970. Then I got a Lafayette Guardian 7000 multi-band PBhi PBlo, AM, FM, SW and UHF radio that you had to use the knob to tune in frequencies back in 1973 which I still have to this very day. After that I got the 10 channel Regency crystal controlled scanner in 1975 (still have it) from Lafayette Electronics. After that I got a 40 Channel AM 5-watt walkie talkie and a realistic TRC-451 AM/SSB radio with a K-40 antenna.
Between the CB and the Multi-band radio I kept myself pretty entertained. When CB radio got too crowded and popular I went further into scanning and in the 90's ended up getting Pro- 2023, 2004, 2005 2006, and 2052 base station scanners. I also got a Uniden handheld scanner, BearCat 210XL scanner, and 2 Pro-93 handheld scanners.

 

[scanfl]

my dad was big into cb's. He also had a "speed trap detector" as he called his scanner. So I grew up listing and talking on his cb's. Back in the early 80 when I got my first car dad helped me put a cb in it. I did have a scanner but only listened to local Police at home. I bought my first shortwave radio around the early 90. After the kids got older decided to get my ham license so in 2009 I took the ham test. I still have a cb in the truck and base station. Dont listen to local police any more its all gone digital but still listen to shortwave.

 

[bharvey2]

so here i sit talking to all of you while i wait for the FCC to post my information.

markmatt - First, I'm real sorry to her about your grandmother. On the other hand, congratulations on passing your test and getting your license. As you mentioned, I'm sure you grandfather is proud of you and can't wait to be able to talk to you on the radio as well as share time with you in the hobby. Do spend as much time with him as you can. I know you won't regret it.

My sons are just a few years younger than you but have no interest in Ham radio, much to my disappointment. It isn't so much that it is radio related but having a common interest that you can share with grandparents, parents, children or grandchildren is great. - Times that will always be remembered. It is pretty amazing what brings some people into the hobby.

 

[teufler]

I got the bug late. Got in the Navy, and at times would be the watch officer for the SAR NET AT MIDWAY ISLAND. We had one of the few air conditioned rooms on Midway and I would spend hours just listening for an emergency call. We had a giant room of Collins S Line units, each tuned for a different portion of the band. After Midway, spent time, 3 years, in the Gulf, sometimes with a long wire out, listening to state side broadcasts. Once, was up when Robert Kennedy was shot and we rebroadcast the transmission back to the carrier. After the Navy, in sales , driving over the midwest, got in the CB craze and felt alittle safer that I had something to transmit with if I needed help or came up on an acciddent. Pre Cell phones, and CB still had some emergency applications.. 20-25 miles was about average, away from cities. Finally the language got so bad, when the family was along, that I said, I am going to become a ham operator. Family laughed, said those people are smart, and your not. Well a class, and I was on the air. First month, I got a notice from Grand Island that I was out of band. 7.0994 where I should have been at 7.100. Family said, we told you so. Well extra class came along, DXCC, several winning contests, several emergency call outs for tornado's , hurricanes, then back to monitoring as an OO and then OOC. I still marvel at the speed of radio waves. I know its speed of light, but its still just darn neat that you push a button, say hello, and Japan or Germany answers back. Now if can do this with Fusion equipment. The hobby is changing, digital is coming but unlike public safety, we are making adjustments to have digital and analog operate together allowing older equipment to many more years of useful value.

 

[ElroyJetson]

It started in a dumpster. Literally.

I began learning about electronics at the age of 10. It started because my brother had a Heathkit experimenter's board full of resistors, capacitors, transformers, transistors, etc. and I wanted to know what the colors on the resistors meant. So I learned....and continued to learn about electronics.

A few years later I'd gotten in the habit of dumpster diving because, you know, people sometimes throw away the COOLEST stuff and it's FREE! There was this company near me that made electronics, at the time I didn't really know what it was.

It was Regency Communications, in Satellite Beach, Florida. Two blocks from my house. Well, I'd find the occasional radio parts. Then one fine afternoon after school I found a box of 27 of their portable radios thrown in the dumpster. Partially taken apart, in various states of repair and condition. I found at least one that was in good shape and it even had a charged battery. So I turned it on and soon heard voices. (Not the ones in my head, for a change.) Of course I grabbed the whole box of radios and took them home.

I took that radio to school the next day (Jr. High) and showed it to a few of my friends. Well, as luck would have it, his dad worked at Regency. He thought those radios maybe shouldn't have been tossed out. That evening he spoke to his dad about it, and the next evening I got a call from my friend's dad, who told me that those radios had been tossed out by accident by the cleaning crew, would I please bring them back?

So of course, I did. All of them. They showed me around the place, showed the product line, the assemby line, the test areas, gave me the whole tour, and as a thank-you for my having saved the radios that were mostly the property of police departments and that needed to be repaired and returned, they gave me a radio set up to receive any six channels of my choice.

This was in the days where the whole county was VHF and radios used crystals.
So I chose the various police departments in the county and a few days later I got a call, come pick up
my radio. Which I did. And I listened to that radio for years and years. I wish I still had it. I upgraded to newer models and versions as time passed, and transferred the crystals to the newer radios. I learned to tune them and repair them.

THAT is what started me. I've always been into radio ever since then, although sometimes I'm more interested in the hobby than at other times. I have a bunch of hobbies and they all take turns occupying my attention.

It's been almost 35 years since I got my first working two way radio.

 

[mikegilbert]

As a kid, I was always fascinated by radio towers, microwave dishes, etc.

In middle school, my best friend's dad worked with local logging companies, so he had a Chevy Celebrity wagon with a Lowband Maxtrac (to talk to the local logging company trucks), a Uniden SMS300 duplex LTR radiophone a Uniden CB, and most importantly, a Uniden 760XLT scanner. We spent hours sitting in the car listening to anything and everything on those radios and the scanner.

When his dad purchased a new Ford Explorer, he outfitted it with new equipment aside from the Maxtrac and Uniden LTR radio, so we took out the scanner and CB and got to work setting up a listening post.

One night while listening to the local ham radio swap net, I heard a guy advertising EX-USFS Motorola Mitrek base stations complete with mobile antenna and MURS crystal cans for $20/radio. My buddy and I got a ride from his dad out to an airplane hanger to buy two of them. We set one up at each of our houses and had a "sweet" VHF communications system.

That summer, I worked mowing lawns to save up enough money to buy some Radioshack PRS102 GMRS radios, which were really 10-channel Motorola Radius radios. They used the standard GP300 audio accy. connector, but Motorola offered up free adapters to utilize the cheaper Talkabout audio accys. Two local business had grandfathered licences, which were on GMRS frequencies, so I felt pretty cool having a delivery company blasting on my radio, should the mood strike.

I guess the "cool" factor about scanning was hearing how the world worked behind the scenes. We had community repeaters, private systems, you name it.

Here's a recording of the local police system. Portables were TK330s which had DTMF post-ID. The mobiles had no ID. The MDC1200 is from Junction City Police. The long tone sequence you occasionally hear is a voice paging system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32pZDstGwUg

 

[raracher81]

My first memory of the radio hobby in general (beyond FM broadcast radio) was when I was in elementary school (early 90s). The guy next door had a police scanner and one night he called to tell us there was a shooting around the block. Turns out it was a kid that I went to school with who was shot. A pretty crappy memory but I always thought that police scanner was so cool. I messed around with some walkie talkies and handheld CB radios as a kid. Mostly being stupid and probably annoying as kids usually do. As a young adult in the early 2000s, I happened to find one of those NASCAR branded radio scanners in a trash can in a walmart parking lot.It was beat up and looked like it had been dropped with a crack in the case. But it still worked. I scanned with that thing 24/7 for about 3 months that summer until one day, it just died. I was hooked. It didnt work for police but I was picking up a lot of other stuff. 10 or so years later, I had the kids and wife thing going on and I wanted to get a digital trunking scanner for police, fire, etc. I never thought I would be able to get my wife to be ok with me spending a few hundred for a good scanner but after about 8 months of looking i happened across my second scanner. Not free this time but virtually free, My local radioshack had a pro-106 on clearance for $60. I had a feeling the price was a mistake but sure enough, at the register, the lady just rang me up. $60 out the door for a $300+ scanner. I brought it home and my wife gave me that look like "god he is so nerdy". next thing I know, she is using the scanner more than me. I even ended up buying her the scanners bigger brother (pro-197 i believe) for an anniversary a few years later. This time paying full price, ouch! I am now an amateur operator, getting my tech in 2011 and eventually upgrading to general. still have that $60 scanner i got one hell of a deal on. My interest comes and goes depending on how busy I am but Im pretty sure I will be in this hobby for the rest of my life.

 

[W6SAE]

My first exposure to ham radio was in 1981, as a boy scout taking part in a "Jamboree-on-the-Air." The father of a fellow scout was a ham. I don't remember too many specifics about that day, but it was one of several sparks that triggered an interest in radio that has stayed with me.

My father was a firefighter with the city of Sacramento, California, for thirty years. I also grew up with the television show Emergency! during the 1970's. I suppose it's only natural that I developed an intense interest in anything fire department-related. I remember, as a child, listening in with my mom as she tuned an AM/FM/shortwave/public safety receiver to local fire frequencies--sometimes we even heard my dad's engine company.

By the mid-1980's, I was an explorer scout (Explorer Post 144 in Citrus Heights, California). Our post's specialty was search and rescue; we were affiliated with the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office. One of my fellow scouts had a Radio Shack/Realistic PRO-31 handheld programmable scanner. It was like a revelation to me; I had to get one for myself. I soon had one and, once I had figured out where to find the frequencies, I was listening in on my favorite public safety agencies, particularly the Sacramento Fire Department and Sacramento County Fire dispatch.

Over the years that have followed, I've progressed through several handheld and desktop scanners as radio technology has advanced. My latest--and possibly my favorite--is a Radio Shack PRO-651.

Less than six months ago, while searching through eBay for a good deal on the next new thing in handheld scanners, I kept encountering the Baofeng UV-5R. It was a tiny little radio and, amazingly, cost less than $50. One evening, I came across an auction for one for which a starting bid had not yet been placed. On a whim, I entered a bid somewhere in the $30 range and moved on, assuming that I would be outbid. To my surprise, I won the radio for $32.

I started to research this radio that I had just won and soon came to the realization that I would need a license to be able to do anything more than just listen to it. This led to an internet search for the key words "ham radio," something that I had not given much thought to in many years. By the time I went to bed a short time later, I had ordered a copy of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Technician Class license manual. The rest is (recent) history.

In the end, it was a cheap Chinese radio I didn't need that finally spurred me to get my amateur radio license.

 

[scooter1968]

i became interested in the hobby after watching shows like ADAM-12, EMERGENCY!, DRAGNET

so i wanted to see if i could get a radio so i could listen in, have been hooked since

 

[RayAir]

As a Boy Scout someone had a radio set up. I was too young to remember a lot of details, but I remember talking to someone across the country. A scout before me contacted a foreign country.

Then around that time I found an old dial AM/FM radio in my grandpa's attic with the VHF HI and UHF for TV signals and found I could tune the local police. My parent's also bought me a copy of Police Call and a PRO-2023. I was fascinated reading all the information in Police Call. This was circa 1990.

I'm mostly just into scanning. I gave up on it for a while since everything was going digital, proprietary digital, or digital encrypted. However I purchased a digital scanner last year and started playing with DSD+ and found a ton of MotoTRBO/DMR in the area so my scanners now are Hytera and Motorola XPR radios. Most local police are on a system that can't be monitored except for a few analog stragglers and some adjacent county P25 comms.

Lots of private police, security, towing, and businesses using DMR. I had no idea mall and hospital security have to deal with so many problems and a wide range of crime.

Hunting for new DMR and NXDN signals is my favorite thing to do hobby wise. When I travel I take my laptop and tapped scanner along. Looking forward to running DSD in Orlando next when I get sent down there soon.

 

[NWI_Scanner_Guy]

How did you become involved in the radio hobby?

I think I was 13 when I had to do a road trip with my parents to go to a 50th anniversary party for an aunt and uncle. I was the only kid there and I was bored out of my mind. I was sent down to the basement to get something, don't remember what, and there on a shelf was what I found out was a short wave receiver. Asked my uncle about it, and he grabbed the radio and some wire and took it all to an upstairs bedroom. Tossed one end of the wire out the window and hooked the other end to the radio. The rest, as they say, is history. I spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon listening to stations from all over the world. I was instantly hooked. When it came time to leave for home, my uncle gave me the radio. I couldn't thank him enough. That radio lasted me about 7 years before it finally gave up the ghost. I did ask my uncle once if he remembered when he got it, and to the best of his recollection, he thought he had it for about 10 years or so before giving it to me. He said that he hadn't used it in years and was surprised it stilled worked that day.

From there, I got into listening to the local police and fire departments on a 4 channel crystal scanner and also got into CB radio briefly before that entire service went to hell in a hand basket. I kept up with scanner technology, seemingly buying each new "advanced" scanner when released. Finally got my amateur radio license (technician) back in 2008 and hope to finally upgrade this summer so I can take advantage of the HF bands, transmit as well as opposed to just listening.

 

[503733238]

in late 80's we had tape recorder with AM & SW broadcast receiver i was told by mom that i can listen to foreign radio stations on SW band, when i browse SW band it was whole new world to me with dozens of unknown languages and tunes, my elder brother had brought book about ham radio i was just fascinated with it, later days i was passing by parked police van who had continuous running commentary about situation in nearby area. those were the days without internet, mobiles so thing that can keep me busy were radios & books

 

[radioman2001]

Well I guess you could say it started when my dad would bring home the old stand up telephones that were being replaced in the 50's with direct dial phones (type 500). I was 3 and had fun taking them apart, then at 8 I would drag home old radios that were taller and weighed more than myself and fix them by replacing the tubes. I would go to the local Pharmacy (Pendergasts in the Bronx to test the tubes) yes a Pharmacy! I listened in on the classics of radio Green Hornet, The Shadow and others at 8:15 every night on WNEW-AM At 11 for Christmas you could buy those cheap Japanese 3 channel walkie-talkie that had the collapsing antenna that always broke. At the same time from age 8 up I would listen to AM radio, Top 40 was coming in to vogue and at night I could pick up CKLW from Canada which was a version of WABC New York if I put the radio in the right spot in our apartment.

I had various radios that I pulled from cars my dad was getting rid of for AM listening,and got into recording music off air to listen to. The big jump came in the form of a AM/FM/SW/Police band radio I got for one Christmas. After that it was off to work after school and with my own money I bought several Lafayette Police radios, both Low and High band. I don't remember the model they were tunable and had 2 crystal positions. Then in about 1973 1974 my first real scanner Peterson H/L 44, then 6 or so other radios. A Patrolman 2 then 7 and 77's. Bearcat 210 in 1978. AT around this time I started collecting and using real 2-way radios.

I could go on for pages, but the main thing is I went into the Air Force for Ground Radio 30434 training as part of being a FAC (Forward Air Contoller) radio became my job and hobby. Well the job part is nearing it's end as I intend to retire soon, and I think 2-way radio is retiring soon too, since we have been having trouble recruiting anyone for our radio shops.

 

[desert-cheetah]

I have always been interested in law enforcement and firefighting and when I was 19 I decided to become an EMT. During that time I also worked as a dispatcher for a local college's security department. While waiting for the results of my state certification, I went to visit a friend in Northern Utah and she had a friend who was a dispatcher for the local county sheriff as well as an EMT for the volunteer ambulance company. She had a crystal scanner and loaned it to my while I was there and I became hooked. When I got home I begged my parents for a scanner just like hers and finally convinced my parents to take me to Radio Shack. The clerk told me crystals were being phased out and it would be more economical to buy one of the newer programmable scanners, which my parents got for me and the rest is history.