No, DH and I have our Amateur Extra HAM radio operator licenses. My ID is N0BEX and those of you who know what my first name is will appreciate the BEX. When I applied for a 'vanity call sign' I told DH every time I ask him if I can have guineas, he says No, Bex, can I have a goat? No Bex. Can I have a horse, No Bex. Figured I should just embrace it.
We decided to become HAM radio operators because of our lousy telephone service where we live. We are really close to being in a dead zone and since we are both getting a bit shall we say long in the tooth we figured we should have some emergency backup communication in place should the need arise.
We have Several antennas up on our property. The one that went down is atop our 60 foot mast tower. We stood there looking up at it with the wind gusting to what feels like 50MPH and all we could say is 'well, crap!' It's too windy to drop the mast and repair it and DH is having his surgery tomorrow so luckily we have a back up antenna on the house so we are still in business.
This antenna is for our 2 meter radio which will reach stations as far away as Mexico Missouri and Quincy IL. It's also our local emergency network. DH and I do storm reporting in the summer. The radar coverage around us is bad so they depend on HAM radio weather watchers. A couple years back I got on the two meter and reported heavy hail hitting our farm. about 15 minutes later they put out a tornado warning for just east of us so the system does work.
