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 Previous: The K7VVV Solar Update |  Next: The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler |
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
July 4, 2003
Your next ham radio contact may be with a celebrity. Find out whom at the Web site we are visiting this week.
When I was a kid, my mother warned me about the company I kept. "Stop hanging around with those Yankees fans!" The problem was that everybody in my Waterbury, Connecticut neighborhood was a New York Yankees fan.
Now that I am an adult, my wife complains about the company I keep: "You're always on the ham radio talking with that Eddie!" (Don't anybody tell my mother that Eddie is a Yankees fan.)
"But, honey, there are a lot of famous and important people who are hams, and I might talk to them someday."
"Like who?"
"Uh... Barry Goldwater."
"Didn't he die?"
"Uh, how about Andy Devine?"
"He's dead, too."
Being happily married and wanting to stay that way, I did not mention potential radio encounters with Priscilla Presley or Patty Loveless, so I came up on the short end of that debate.
 The Famous Hams and ex-Hams web site is a who's who of the famous who are licensed Amateur Radio operators. |
I want to be prepared the next time the subject comes up, so I Googled the net, looking for celebrated ham radio operators. Almost instantaneously, Google turned up the Famous Hams and Ex-Hams Web site of Gerry Jurrens, N2GJ.
What an impressive list of notable ham radio operators! Gerry has been maintaining this list since the 1980s and it is very comprehensive. It includes actors, ambassadors, astronauts, athletes, attorneys, authors, aviators, clerics, comedians, composers, cosmonauts, educators, entertainers, inventors, journalists, judges, meteorologists, military, musicians, Nobel prize winners, politicians, rock 'n' rollers, royalty, scientists, singers, statesmen and even one UFO abductee. There are also a few infamous hams on the list, but you don't want to mention them when you are trying to win friends and influence people.
By the way, so many astronauts and cosmonauts are hams that they warrant their own Web page. Gerry also has a "Rumors" page for famous folks who are reputed to be hams, but really aren't. For instance, there is VE3SUN, who is named Peter Jennings, but he is not the "Peter Jennings" who does the nightly news on ABC.
Gerry received a great deal of help building and maintaining the lists from his old college friend, Steven Glazer, W2SG. As stated in the intro to their site, Steve and Gerry "believe that a worthwhile goal for the Web site is not only to highlight those folks with Amateur Radio licenses who have found some interesting thing that distinguishes them from the pack, but also to try to verify each entry, adding links that support the inclusion of that person, along with links to pictures, QSL cards, memorable stories, etc." Gerry's is a very interesting site that will provide hours of interesting exploring, not to mention great ammunition for my next "who are you talking to on the radio?" debate.
Until next time, keep on surfin'.
Editor's note:
Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, resides in downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, and has been a QST writer for over 25 years. Since getting
his ticket in 1969, Stan has sampled nearly every entrée in the Amateur Radio
menu (including a stint as Connecticut Section Manager), but he keeps coming
back to his favorite preoccupations: VHF and packet radio. As a result, he runs
a 2-meter APRS digipeater and weather station (WA1LOU-15) from his mountaintop
location in central Connecticut. Stan, a long time advocate of using computers
with Amateur Radio, wrote programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna
bearings way back in 1978. Today, he is on the board of directors of Tucson
Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) and uses his Mac to surf the Internet searching for
that perfect ham radio Web page. To contact Stan, send e-mail to wa1lou@arrl.net.
| Previous: The K7VVV Solar Update | Next: The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler |
