Why I Got My Ham Radio License

I got my ham radio license back in the mid-90s: KF6FBP.

While most folks get theirs to hack on electronics or chat with people all over the world, I got mine for safety — specifically, for solo hiking in remote areas.

One spring day, sometime during the middle-of-the-week in the mid-90s, I found myself taking a ferry down Florence Lake to the trailhead that would lead me to the John Muir Trail and into the Evolution Basin. This is an amazing and isolated area in the central Sierra Nevada — north of Kings Canyon National Park and south of Yosemite.

It was early spring in a year with low snowpack, and there were very few people around. I was the only one on the ferry, and honestly, I was lucky it was even running that day.

The place is incredibly beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I was making good time heading east out of McClure Meadow. I was going ultra-light on that trip — no tent, just a tarp I could rig with my Leki trekking poles. The heaviest item in my pack was the bear-resistant food canister you need in these parts to keep bears from stealing your food at night.

I was going down some rock steps when suddenly a rattlesnake struck one of my trekking poles. It startled the hell out of me, and I basically pole-vaulted over the steps with the other pole — just in time to see a small rattlesnake slither off the rocky trail.

Once my heart rate came back to something resembling normal, I double-checked that I hadn’t been bitten or injured during my impromptu pole-vaulting maneuver.

I got back to hiking, keeping a much closer eye on those rock steps. It was a cool morning, and I figure the snake was just warming itself on the rocks in the early sun. The rest of the trip was uneventful. No more snakes. The only other hitch was finding my food canister the next morning after the bears had batted it around trying to open it.

But hiking alone — back in the days before iPhones, iPods, Bluetooth speakers, or any of that ilk — you had a lot of time to think. And I started thinking: what if that snake had bitten me?

I didn’t see a single person that entire three-day trip, aside from the guy running the ferry boat.

And back then I was in shape — I could easily do 20+ mile days on those rough trails. But even in good shape, a rattlesnake bite that far out? I’d have died for sure.

So I started thinking about what I could do. Cell phones were still new and didn’t work at all in the remote mountains. Honestly, they barely work there now. Satellite phones and devices like the Garmin inReach were still decades away.

That’s when I started thinking about portable ham radios. They were small, surprisingly powerful, and — depending on frequency — had decent range. So I decided to check it out when I got back from the trip.

After some research, I found that certain Yaesu HT (handheld transceiver) units could be modified to transmit “out of band.” In other words, if you knew the right frequencies, you could potentially reach bands used by the National Park or Forest Service, which had repeaters in remote areas for their rangers. And the info on those frequencies? It was out there if you knew where to look (Usenet newsgroups).

Technically it’s illegal to use those frequencies unless authorized. But I figured it was better than being dead. So I picked up one of those radios, did the mod by unsoldering some surface-mount resistors on its circuit board, got my ham tech-plus license (down in Mountain View after studying the rulebook for a week), and started bringing the radio on my trips.

And — of course — I never ran into another situation where I needed it.

Eventually, technology caught up. I got an Iridium satellite phone. Then I got too fat and unfit to get far down the trail, so I stopped bothering. Nowadays iPhones have built in satellite messaging, so in the unlikely event I end up needing help in a remote area, I’m covered (as long as the iPhone is charged, anyway).

But I’ve kept my ham license current and still pick up new radios from time to time. In any kind of disaster, cell networks will quickly fail — but analog ham radio will still work. Lots of ham clubs still exist and keep solar-powered repeaters up and running. It could be a life-saver.

I usually have a 2-meter HT sitting on my desk at work and another at home, ready to go — just in case.