Making contact

POST FALLS — A half-dozen people gathered around a central pole attached to a giant oval mass of wires and cables.

Using more wires connected to the pole, they worked together Friday morning at Frank Krug's Post Falls property to raise one of several massive antennas to be used during this weekend's Amateur Radio Field Day event.

"Each one of these is experimental," said Krug, a past president of the Kootenai Amateur Radio Society.

Society members have raised the "antenna farm" and will operate ham radios for a continuous 24 hours beginning at 11 this morning and ending at 11 a.m. Sunday.

Conducted by ham radio operators since 1933, Amateur Radio Field Day is an international ham radio preparedness exercise sponsored by the American Radio Relay League. It tests the abilities of ham radio operators throughout North America as they set up and operate stations under simulated emergency conditions.

“This is a hobby where learning never stops,” Krug said. “There’s so much to learn, and it’s constantly changing."

While the hobby is tech-heavy and a license is required to operate ham radios, it's truly a social activity. It was even printed on a society member's shirt: "Ham radio — The original social media."

“You send that signal out, you don’t know where it’s going. And, to me, that’s still the intrigue of it," Krug said. "I love it. And it travels at the speed of light. It takes longer for my voice to hit you than it does for it to hit Germany, how about that? Isn’t that weird? This hobby, it’s full of surprises. You never know who you’re going to talk with."

Jim Fenstermaker — call sign "K9JF" — is new to the Kootenai club, but he is no stranger to amateur radio.

“My first time doing the field day was in 1962,” he said. “I was in junior high."

He became interested because his uncle’s boss’ boss was a ham radio operator. Fenstermaker said, when he was a boy, he saw a picture in National Geographic of a ham radio station in Antarctica on McMurdo Sound.

"My uncle said, ‘That’s my boss.' That got me going," he said. "I used to listen to my grandparents’ old, wooden short-wave radio. That got also me going. I’ve been doing this now for 64 years and I’m as enthusiastic as I was."

Ham radio has been a big part of Fenstermaker's life.

"My wife and I travel a lot, and no matter where we go in the world, I know somebody,” he said. “I’ve got friends all over the world. I’m not talking about friends from somebody I met yesterday, I’m talking about friends who have been lifelong friends."

This is what makes amateur radio unique and exciting.

“When you’re first introduced to the hobby, you get a story like that and that’s what feeds the fire," society member Shannon Riley said. "And the fire never goes out."

Society Vice President Tami Wengeler said she wants to make as many connections as she can this weekend.

"I just love doing it,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to just getting to hang out with all the other ham radio people for a couple days. Most of the time you see each other, meetings Thursdays and a person here and there. This is a chance when we can get together. We can really work out our radios, work on our antennas and spend some quality time together.”

Visit k7id.org to make contact with the Kootenai Amateur Radio Society.