My start with radio as a hobby

When I was about 5 years old, my parents brought me over to the house of a guy in the neighborhood
that worked as an engineer for the local power company and that was an Amateur radio operator.
Almost 40 years later, I still have this very strong memory of him showing me a radio transceiver
for the first time and of him calling up a buddy over the air who then answered back and said hello
to me.  It was very, very fascinating stuff.

When I was probably about 10, he installed a Citizen's Band "CB" radio and simple dipole antenna made
from wire and two nails in my backyard "fort" (every kid in my neighborhood seemed to have their own
fort, but only mine had wireless communications).

Now, I don't know why exactly people kept feeling the need to give me radios as a kid (destiny, I suppose),
but as luck would have it my dad's dad gave me my first radio scanner when I was also about 10 years old.
Oh man, I was so seriously off to the races when I got that first scanner.  I'd end up owning probably
at least 4 or 5 different radio scanners over just the next 10 years of my life.  Basically just about
every birthday was an immediate trip to Radio Shack to trade my hard-earned birthday cash for the next
upgraded scanner.

I also ended up talking on the CB a bunch as a kid.  The CB radio scene was very much alive and well
where I was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s.  I installed a pretty big antenna on my mom's car
and would operate the CB from the driveway.  I even had other CB'ers come over to my house and help install
a big antenna up about 35 feet on steel poles.  One night I got to go out with a bunch of CB'ers playing
an all-night city-wide game of "CB tag."

I got my Amateur radio license in high school which led to meeting a bunch of smart older people that seemed
to really have their shit together and that were really, really into radio.  One time they invited me along
for something called a "fox hunt" where a bunch of guys participate in a city or county-wide
"direction-finding exercise" to locate another Amateur radio operator that is parked somewhere and operating
a transmitter.

One common thread that I've found throughout my involvement with radio is that there are lots of good people
out there that are really willing to help a kid that wants to get on the air.  I had people come over to the
house on several occassions to install different antennas way up in the air.  One guy even came over and helped
me construct my own antenna using copper pipe and a pipe cutter, blow torch, and solder.  A local cop that was
an Amateur radio opreator gave me my first Morse code key and audio cassette tapes for learning the code.  A guy
that I met through CB ended up giving me all of the parts to build my first 286 PC.

It's been good.

[I plan to write aonther entry (actually probably many entries) purely on radio scanners]

CREATED 2020-04-01