[Jeffhs]

Sandy, there has never been a better time than right now to get an amateur radio license. The FCC dropped the Morse code requirement for ham licenses a while back (last year or the year prior, I'm not sure), so now all that's required is a 74-percent or better score on a 55-question written exam, and you're in. You already have half of your station now, with your R-390a; all you need now is a license and a transmitter to go with it. Living on a farm as you do, you should have plenty of room to put up a decent antenna as well. I lived in a Cleveland suburb for years and used verticals, long wires and dipoles with no problems at all, except one with a 70-foot all-band dipole I had for my amateur station. There was a huge apple tree in my back yard; the feedline (450-ohm ladder line) of necessity had to snake through it to get to my station equipment, which was located in my bedroom. Needless to say, every time the tree swayed in the wind (and I can remember some fairly bad wind/snowstorms in my area in the years I lived there), the feedline would move with it, eventually breaking the connection at the antenna.

The ham radio station I have today, in my apartment 15-some miles from my previous residence, is actually in my computer, powered by a system called Echolink. This system uses voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) to connect to other amateurs in this country and world-wide by way of this technology and RF links -- without antennas of any kind needed at the user's end, unless an Echolink user wants to set up his or her own HF or VHF "node" for the use of other hams.

If you don't feel you want to deal with antennas and so on, EL may be the perfect way for you to get on the air. The only catch is that you need an amateur license to use Echolink, but as I mentioned above, getting that license is much easier today than it used to be, for example when I got my first license almost 38 years ago.

"No code" does not necessarily mean, either, that ham radio is now nothing more than a glorified Citizens Band. Nothing could be further from the truth. CB and ham radio are two completely different communications services, with ham (amateur) radio being the more sophisticated of the two. Hams are much more polite (and follow the rules of the road, outlined in detail in Part 97 of the FCC amateur regulations) on the air than CB operators, thanks to the efforts of the FCC to track down and silence scofflaws permanently.

You say Lauriann won't let you have an R-390a on your nightstand...well, there's a way around that. (Where there's a will, there is a way, as the expression goes.) If you can find a small AM/FM/SW radio (I'm sure they can be found about anywhere these days, including Radio Shack) that you can listen to via headphones, she probably wouldn't mind. These radios are nowhere near (and I mean nowhere near) the size of an R-390A (many of these are small enough, in fact, to fit in a coat pocket), so even the largest of the former would probably fit nicely on your bed table with room to spare. Some of the better ones have the same refinements as your R390A, including a BFO (beat frequency oscillator) for copying CW (Morse code) or SSB (single sideband voice).

A bonus feature of having a small SW set like this is that you will also have instant access to the most accurate time in the world, thanks to radio station WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado. This station boasts 1kW signals from individual transmitters on 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz, so you should be able to hear it 24/7 where you are. Never again will you have to call your local time and temperature number (if your phone company has one) to reset your clocks after a power outage; just tune in WWV on the frequency that comes in the best in your area, note the time stated by the announcer, and there you are. WWV states the time of day in 24-hour UTC (universal) time, which in the eastern/southeastern US is either four or five hours different (depending on whether or not Daylight Savings Time is in effect, except of course in Arizona and Hawaii) from Eastern Standard Time. The conversion can be tricky at first, but once you get used to it it will become second nature, or close to it.

The world is as close as your radio (or your computer, if you use Echolink) when you have an amateur license, and as I said, it's so much better than CB it isn't funny. I wouldn't have stayed with it 38 years myself if I didn't believe that as strongly as I do.

73 (best of regards),