Getting in Touch...Converting an Old Toy Into a New Tool

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But this step to a more isolated way of living generates its own array of problems, too. With it comes a reduction in the number of stimulating personal contacts. Isolation from sources of information. Isolation from cultures other than the one we're trying to create. Isolation from some of the people we love. Isolation from dialogue.

Travel and the telephone are two ways of relieving these problems, but the airlines and phone company may not be among your favorite charities ... or you may just not have the bread.

Friend, be of good cheer. There is a low-cost, down-home, do-it-yourself way to COMMUNICATE!

For example, I talked with my friend George Cummings the other night for an hour. We rapped about the land he had bought in Washington State, where he's going to dig for water, and the materials with which he plans to build a house. (Fieldstone walls, but tin roof or sod?) Then we got into a discussion of wind power, and the conversation ended with George planning to investigate motorcycle generators.

Nothing magic about the conversation ... except that George was in Colorado and I was in Minnesota and we weren't spending a dollar for every three minutes of phone time. Why not? Because George has a ham radio license and so do I. That was the magic.

I only wished that my friend had also been equipped with slow-scan TV so he could have looked at some photos I took in Peru of stone houses with sod roofs (some going back to the days of the Incas). With SSTV, hams can send electronic images wherever their voices will travel. On the receiving end, it's much like watching a yellow radar screen: you can see a new picture "painted" in light every eight seconds. . . and - suddenly! - you have a visual dimension added to the audio of your amateur radio rig.

This incredibly useful tool, amateur radio, has been around for over 50 years as the toy of teen-age boys and middle-aged men ... and is quite different from citizens' band (CB) radio. CB is great for communicating up to 20 miles or so, but that's about all. Hams, on the other hand, are allowed to transmit and receive on frequency bands which make long distance transmission possible. This is due to the kind of cooperation of the mirror-like ionosphere 50 to 200 miles above the earth, which allows the hams' signals to bounce their way around the world.

The ionosphere isn't as reliable as Ma Bell, but that adds to the fun. The greater the distance, the chancier matters get. Still, scheduled contacts with friends 1,000 to 2,000 miles away or less should be possible almost every day with typical equipment. And if you're patient and wait for especially good conditions, amazing results are possible. For example, while traveling through New Zealand recently, I talked to the States several times with a small batteryoperated walkie-talkie hooked to a wire antenna thrown over a tree branch. (An advantage for country folks is that they can operate during weekday daytimes when lots of people are working and crowding of the bands is minimized.)

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