{"id":12799,"date":"2023-06-01T20:57:22","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T20:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12799"},"modified":"2023-06-04T21:03:40","modified_gmt":"2023-06-04T21:03:40","slug":"return-of-the-ham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2023\/06\/01\/return-of-the-ham\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of the Ham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The Guardian<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No cellphone? No problem! The vintage radio enthusiasts prepping for disaster<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Ham radio users, from teenagers to eightysomethings, are ready to communicate in the next crisis \u2013 be it a wildfire, pandemic or \u2018the big one\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by\u00a0Amanda Ulrich<\/a>\u00a0in Palm Springs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Glenn Morrison, president of the Desert Radio Amateur Transmitting Society, a Palm Springs-based club dedicated to everything ham radio. Photograph: Adam Amengual\/The Guardian<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an ancient fable that Glenn Morrison, a pony-tailed, 75-year-old who lives in the\u00a0California<\/a>\u00a0desert, likes to tell to prove a point. As the lesson goes, one industrious ant readies for winter by stocking up on food and supplies, while an aimless grasshopper wastes time and doesn\u2019t plan ahead. When the cold weather finally arrives, the ant is \u201cfat and happy\u201d, but the grasshopper starves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this telling, Morrison is the ant, and those who don\u2019t brace themselves for future emergencies \u2013 they\u2019re the grasshoppers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morrison is in the business of being prepared. He\u2019s the president of the Desert Rats (or the Radio Amateur Transmitting Society), a club based in Palm Springs that\u2019s dedicated to everything ham radio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old-school technology has been around for more than a century. In lieu of smartphones and laptops, ham radio operators use handheld or larger \u201cbase station\u201d radios to communicate over radio frequencies. The retro devices can range from the size of a walkie-talkie to the heft of a boxy, 20th-century VCR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generations after its invention, one of ham radio\u2019s biggest draws for hobbyists is its usefulness in an emergency \u2013 think wildfires, earthquakes or another pandemic. If disaster strikes and internet or cellular networks fail, radio operators could spring into action and help with emergency response communications, and be able to keep in contact with their own networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Guardian No cellphone? No problem! The vintage radio enthusiasts prepping for disaster Ham radio users, from teenagers to eightysomethings, are ready to communicate in the next crisis \u2013 be it a wildfire, pandemic or \u2018the big one\u2019 by\u00a0Amanda Ulrich\u00a0in Palm Springs There\u2019s an ancient fable that Glenn Morrison, a pony-tailed, 75-year-old who lives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}