Getting my amateur radio licence was exciting. I had studied, passed the exam, received my callsign and was officially a ham. There was just one small problem: now what?
Amateur radio is an enormous hobby. You can talk through local repeaters, chase DX on HF, experiment with digital modes, build antennas, operate portable, learn Morse code and do approximately 47,000 other things I hadn’t even heard of yet. As a new ham, I wanted to try everything. I just didn’t know where to start.
Fortunately, one of my first opportunities came through the OARC. The club organized a group purchase of Retevis RT95 2-metre radios for new hams, and I joined in. Suddenly I had something more capable than my handheld and could start participating regularly in local nets. I also started hearing the same callsigns over and over, and slowly the combinations of letters and numbers became actual people.
Not long after that, someone in the local ham radio Discord group offered a used Zacktek WSPR transmitter for sale. We met in the ByWard Market, had a lovely chat, and I went home with a new piece of equipment that somehow seemed both incredibly simple and incredibly complicated.
WSPR — Weak Signal Propagation Reporter — introduced me to an entirely different side of radio. I could transmit a tiny signal and then go online to WSPR.rocks and see where it had been received. I became fascinated with watching the maps and seeing how far my signal travelled. Without really realizing it, I was starting to learn about propagation.
Looking back now, I have to laugh at how intimidated I was by that little WSPR transmitter. Things that seem mysterious when you’re brand new can become completely ordinary surprisingly quickly.
Then came the Carp Hamfest in September. I had never been to a hamfest and had absolutely no idea what to expect. It was fascinating. It was also completely overwhelming.
There were tables covered with radios, cables, antennas, connectors, components and mysterious electronic objects whose purposes were completely unknown to me. Was that radio a fantastic bargain? Was that piece of equipment something I desperately needed? What did it even do? And perhaps most importantly: what WAS that thing?
But something else happened at the hamfest. I met people whose voices and callsigns I already knew from the radio. Amateur radio suddenly became a little less anonymous and a lot more like a community.
And then life happened.
For personal reasons, amateur radio took a back seat for a while. I didn’t get nearly as far into the hobby that fall as I had imagined I would when I first got my licence. But I discovered something else I really like about amateur radio: it waits for you. There is no requirement to keep progressing, and nobody takes your callsign away because you haven’t been on the air lately. When life settles down, you can pick up exactly where you left off.
That’s what I did. That winter, with a little more time on my hands, I decided I was ready for HF. Did I carefully research every available radio, make a spreadsheet comparing features and spend six months making an informed purchasing decision?
Of course not. I saw an Icom IC-7300 on sale and bought it.
Do I like it? No, I love it.
Would I buy exactly the same radio today, knowing what I know now? Probably not… and I don’t actually regret that. One of the challenges of being new to amateur radio is that you don’t yet know what you don’t know. I couldn’t have told you which HF radio features would eventually matter to me because I hadn’t operated HF yet. I hadn’t discovered what modes I enjoyed, what kind of operating I wanted to do, or where my interests would take me.
Sometimes you have to start doing something before you can figure out how you want to do it.
A year later, I’m still figuring that out. And, appropriately enough, if you’re reading this when the September newsletter arrives, the Carp Hamfest is only about a week away. I’ll be going back.
This time, I’ll recognize more of the equipment on those tables. I’ll understand a few more of the conversations. I’ll know more of the people behind the callsigns. And I’ll have a much better idea of what I need and what I don’t.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself. We’ll see what comes home with me.
73!
Michelle
VA3PZA
Last Updated on 2026-09-03 by Joannadanna