Hamming it up

When one is standing on the shore of the Upper North Platte River, the sounds one expects to hear would be the songs of birds. On one warm summer weekend, June 23, a different sound joined the avian melodies. The arrhythmic beeps of morse code and the whitenoise of an amateur radio in search of other stations could be heard on the property of the Ryan Ranch. The ranch owned by Greg Ryan, who also owns Ryan Electronics, was playing host to the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day.

"What we do here, specifically, and what I do a lot when I go out and activate parks is you're taking a radio system with an off-the-grid power source and you're proving that you can actually use that as a viable method of communication with other folks," said Rick Parent, a longtime ham radio operator present at Ryan Ranch during the event.

Parent, who first received his amateur radio license in 1976, lives in Kansas but makes his way up to the mountains of Wyoming for the event. Parent isn't alone in the drive, though. Lee Ward, another longtime amateur radio operator, comes to the Cowboy State from Kansas City, Missouri as well.

Ward received his amatuer radio license in 1962 while in high school.

"In high school, found a high school electronics teacher at a vocational high school in Chicago who was teaching morse code, which used to be a requirement, and the theory necessary to get the license," said Ward. "He licensed a lot of kids."

Ward was drafted into the United States Army at the age of 22 and while in Germany was approached by a warrant officer who asked if he had his German ham radio license. Ward informed the officer that he didn't. The warrant officer rectified that. While he was in a nuclear missile unit at the time, Ward was pulled out of the unit for his last six months of enlistment to help run the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS).

"Health and welfare was more important than shooting a nuke," Ward said.

Parent played a similar role while in the United States Navy. The Navy no longer operates on MARS and instead uses a different amateur system. The only difference, according to both Ward and Parent, are the frequencies on which both systems operate. Parent was stationed on a destroyer and had stopped in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba when he and other radio operators showed the captain of the ship what they could do with the amateur radio.

"We called the captain. He came in and we phone-patched him to his wife back in Charleston, S.C. and when he saw that he was able to talk to his wife whenever at night back in South Carolina he said 'That's it. How much money do you want?' He got into the ship's welfare and recreation fund and built a station on the ship," said Parent.

Parent and Ward now use their experience to help others who are interested in getting involved in amateur radio. While one radio was set-up in a converted enclosed trailer, a digital morse code radio sat on the table between Parent and Ward and was hooked up to something resembling a brick - and was nearly as heavy as one - but was in fact a lithium iron phosphate battery. This type of battery is more reliable and stable than the standard lithium ion batteries used in cell phones and other equipment.

"You can short it, it doesn't burn. You can overload it, it doesn't burn. You can burn it, it doesn't burn," said Ward.

Ryan may have brought both Parent and Ward to Wyoming, but how did they know Ryan?

"I would like to say it was all ham radio, but it really wasn't. There was a guy in town, his uncle had lived here and he grew up here, named Jim Johnson, had a home down in Encampment and he was in Kansas City as a chief engineer for the big paging company Mobile Phone. I knew Jim from Mobile Phone Paging because I was in the two-way radio business. I came up here with Jim one time when he donated a police car to Encampment Police Department. While we were here, I met Greg (Ryan)," Ward said.

According to Ward, after a subsequent visit to the Valley, he and Ryan became friends and Ward comes up at least twice a year.

"It's kind of a funny thing, the relationship that you develop in the hobby. I just recently met Greg, although I've known him for a couple years because I operate a station that is down the hill on his property from my house in Overland Park over the internet," said Parent.

Ryan was curious about the technology and gave Parent permission to follow through with the plan of remote station operation.

"Even up here, where you don't have Google Fiber, it's still very adequate," Parent said.

While Ryan was at the event, there was on person that both Parent and Ward seemed to miss. Former Ryan Electronics employee and Valley resident, Robert Streeter.

"I was really disappointed when Rob (Streeter) went off to Antarctica and didn't upgrade his license to general so he could operate the HF station down there and become a big-deal person to talk to from all over the world," Ward said.

"From any place on the planet, Antarctica is a big deal to talk to," added Parent.

According to Saratoga resident Andy Van Tol, who took part in the ARRL Field Day, over 100 contacts were made on the weekend of June 23. Anyone interested in learning more about amateur radio or about ARRL Field Day can go to www.arrl.org.