{"id":7879,"date":"2021-10-16T20:31:53","date_gmt":"2021-10-17T01:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=7879"},"modified":"2021-10-16T20:33:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-17T01:33:41","slug":"silent-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=7879","title":{"rendered":"Silent key"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Thursday: 3 miles; Today: 5 miles]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years back I splurged for the lifetime membership in the ARRL, the ham radio national membership body in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every month I get a copy of QST magazine in the mail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I usually read QST starting from the back. Most of the back 1\/3 or so is advertisements. While paging along, back to front, one of the first interesting things I encounter is the Silent Key page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In ham radio lingo a silent key is someone who died. Their morse code sending device (key) is silent. The same term is used for hams who don’t do morse code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually the list is three full columns on one page. I scan for people in particular states: IA, CO, MS, AL, and see if I may have known them. I’ll go quite a while without seeing any. Although I have been interested in ham radio for a long time, I don’t do a lot with clubs and organizations. In addition, my memory for names is not that good and a lot of hams I have known only by first name and callsign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this month they listed Gerald Johnson <\/a>K0CQ of Ellsworth, Iowa. When I was a student at Iowa State in the early\/mid 1980’s I ran into him frequently, particularly as part of Army MARS (Military Affiliate Radio Service) which did message handling for overseas service men and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was an interesting guy, as you can see if you read that obituary I linked to; I didn’t know he was a musician.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Thursday: 3 miles; Today: 5 miles] A few years back I splurged for the lifetime membership in the ARRL, the ham radio national membership body in the United States. Every month I get a copy of QST magazine in the mail. I usually read QST starting from the back. Most of the back 1\/3 or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7879"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7882,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879\/revisions\/7882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}