Hamming It Up:

Storms are brewing in Southern Indiana, information Grandview resident William Rantala took note of Friday morning while sitting in a lawn chair beside his pickup parked on the grounds of Cleburne's Chisholm Trail Outdoor Museum. Several yards away, more comfortably parked under the shade of the museum's pavilion, Cleburne resident Tim Irish checks in with Wisconsin before moving on to Mexico. "I guess you could call it the original chat room or Facebook," Rantala jokes. Both are ham radio operators and both were on hand to celebrate the Chisholm Trail's 150th anniversary. "We've got seven call signs operating from Abilene, Kansas to Georgetown, Texas," fellow ham radio operator Jay Stanfield, a Nemo resident, said. "W5A to W5G, which are specially assigned by the FCC for this special event." Ham radio operators enjoy participating in special event station sessions be they annual events and/or holidays like Memorial Day, Veterans Day or July 4, or something more obscure and/or a one-time event. The Special Event Station listing in the May 2017 issue of QST, a publication devoted entirely to amateur radio, lists special event stations covering the Hubble Space Telescope, the Indianapolis 500, the 100th anniversary of the appearance of Our Lady of Fatima and the surrender of Nazi Germany in World War II among other listings.

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