My first venture into electronic communications as a hobby and career started with monitoring police and fire frequencies. I was a college freshman in the early 1970s’s when I bought my first "police radio", a used Lafayette high-band VHF-FM receiver, from a friend. The receiver was a mobile unit with a small tuning knob and a 1" clear plastic skirt with the frequency markings. I remember that it was often a challenge to accurately tune the frequency (around 155 MHz) while listening to the intermittent dispatch transmissions of the Honolulu Police Department. In fact, I could confirm the exact frequency only by listening for the patrol unit tactical call signs.

Sometime later, from the same friend I bought a used Radio Shack VHF "pocket scanner". It featured individual red LEDs for channel indicators, used a nine-volt battery, and had a rubber-duckie antenna. The operational limitation with this 4-channel receiver was that each frequency required a separate plug-in crystal and it only had four socket positions. At the time, HPD used seven dispatch channels and the Fire Department used two other VHF frequencies!

It was with this interest in two-way radios that I decided to switch to a two-year Electronics Technology degree program at Honolulu Community College. My career goal at the time was to get a job in the police radio shop. After graduation, I worked for an electronics firm in Honolulu before moving to the mainland. I have worked for TRW as a technician and test engineer since 1981, except for a three-year departure to work at the University of Hawaii solar observatory on Maui.

The real catalyst for getting an amateur radio license came on October 1, 1987. It was early in the morning and I was at work in a lab and turning on the equipment on a test setup for integrated circuits on still uncut 3-1/2" diameter wafers. The operation was so delicate that the probe station was mounted on a desk-sized, 18-inch thick, solid granite block to dampen vibrations and a specially-trained technician came over daily from another building to land the very-fine probes onto the individuals chips while using a microscope.

Then it happened. BOOM! BOOM!! BOOM!!! I watched in shock and amazement as the huge granite block was jolted up and down several inches. It was 7:42 AM – a magnitude 5.9 earthquake had just struck, with the epicenter near Whittier, CA. This was followed by a sizable aftershock a few minutes later (the largest aftershock came three days later). Needless to say, my project manager came into the lab and told me "Don’t probe any wafers today, find something else to do". In the Los Angeles area, eight people were killed and there was $358 million in damage due to the Whittier Narrows earthquake.

My ultimate reaction to that experience was to get involved in disaster preparedness and I thought that a ham radio license would be a good thing to have. The following April, I purchased a Gordon West ham radio kit from Radio Shack and it took me six weeks to learn the Morse code at 5 words-per-minute. I passed the Novice Class license code and written exams on June 16, 1988. I then upgraded to Technician Class a month later. Even though I successfully passed all of the ham radio written exam elements in the following two months, it was not until 1990 that I passed the 13 WPM code test for an Advanced Class license. In 1997, I passed the 20 WPM code for an Extra Class license (finally!).

Ham radio is a great hobby - I have been active for many years with the W6TRW Amateur Radio Association and the Emergency Communications Team. I have participated in ham radio public service events, contests, T-hunts, and at Field Days; been a member of RACES; trained with the Red Cross; taught ham radio license classes on Maui; and occasionally serve as an Volunteer Examiner.

My main interest has always been emergency and disaster response. Through the National Disaster Medical System, I am very fortunate to have been federally-deployed to many drills and exercises, hurricane responses, the Alaska Air 261 crash, the 2000 Democratic National Convention, and to Ground Zero during the WTC disaster response in New York City. My most recent assignment was to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Nearly thirty years after starting this hobby, I have a small collection of HF, VHF, and UHF radios. I have also started listening to overseas broadcast programs with a newly-acquired Icom R75 shortwave receiver. My latest addition is a 1000-channel Yaesu VR-500 receiver (with programmable DC-to-daylight frequency coverage from 100 kHz to 1300 MHz) that is smaller than my original "pocket scanner". However, with the latest trunking radio systems, I still can’t listen to all of the public service channels that I’m interested in!

Besides, I have never worked in a police radio shop. Not yet, anyway.