With Some Frequency.(HELLO WORLD: A LIFE IN HAM RADIO)(Emergency Broadcasting)(Book Review)

"CQ, CQ, CQ, this is W2OJW, calling CQ. Whiskey Two Oscar Juliet Whiskey in Hackensack, New Jersey, standing by for a call."For seventy-four years, before his "key went silent,"in 2001, this was the nightly appeal of Jerry Powell, an aeronautical engineer, amateur trombonist, and avid ham-radio operator. Powell's devotion to vacuum tubes, multiband yagis, parallel RLC circuits, and midnight conversations with fellow-hams from Moscow to Montevideo is celebrated by Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre in the colorful HELLO WORLD: A LIFE IN HAM RADIO (Princeton Architectural Press). Hams, as Gregory and Sahre discovered, "come in all shapes and sizes and live all over the world."Although ham radio is generally considered an arcane pastime reserved for microhenry-obsessed nerds, recent estimates put the number of worldwide hams ...