DX is a term used by amateur radio operators, hams, to indicate long-distance, usually trans-oceanic communication. When I first became involved in the hobby, as a teenager in the late 1950s, short-wave radio was still a cutting-edge technology, and the ability to sit in your bedroom or basement ham shack and talk to someone on the other side of the world, a DX station, was thrilling.

In order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, amateur radio operators held a global attempt to bounce messages off the surface of the orbiting satellite.

Many people across the US used any means they could on June 27th to broadcast a message to the Moon using amateur radio, with the help of disused or infrequently utilised government satellite dishes.

Since the emergence of radio in the 1910s, Russians haven't just listened-they've listened passionately, forcefully, illegally. In the '50s, they reassembled shortwave radios to tune into Western broadcasts. In the '60s, they joined amateur radio clubs and spoke with their cohorts in the United States and Europe. They huddled by their radios for 40 years to hear Voice of America's Russian programming, trying to make out scraps of dialogue and musical fragments over the screeching white noise of Soviet interference. Some of them even risked their livelihoods to tell journalists from VOA-and Radio Liberty, another American-government-run station-the truth about government oppression.

It's an event that some groups take very seriously, planning all year long for. Still, others just use the date to get together, make a few contacts and enjoy each other's company. No matter how you view it, ARRL Field Day is fun!

Robert Carter was a citizen of the world by the time he was a teenager - and he never had to leave home.

He was a ham-radio operator as a boy in Thomaston, and his skill at clicking out coded messages to the far corners of the Earth and deciphering ones he received ensured he had a good job when he entered the Army Air Corps during World War II.

When the Army saw he knew international Morse code, it put him to work teaching it to pilots, said his son, R. Michael Carter.

Robert C. Carter, 83 of DeKalb County, died at the Hospice of Atlanta on Wednesday after a long battle with cancer.

Helen Schlarman wasn't hamming it up when it came to broadcasting directions to James McDonnell Park from her amateur radio station, call letters WOAKI. Her voice was clear and concise.

It was a big ham radio Field Day last weekend in the Valley and elsewhere in the area, including Kooskia.

David Brainerd helped organize it. Ham radio operators from Idaho and Lewis counties gathered at City Park Saturday and Sunday

The airwaves were crowded last weekend.

Local ham radio enthusiasts set up several stations outside of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers building at Hillsdale Lake, trying to reach as many other ham radio operators across the United States as possible during the American Radio Relay League's annual field day event.

When Larry Prelog suffered a fatal fall from a radio tower Saturday at a ham radio demonstration in Watervliet, he was doing the routine task of installing an antenna.

It was something the 57-year-old Niles man had done time and time again as a professional installer of radio equipment and radio towers, said Matt Severin, spokesman for the Blossomland Amateur Radio Association (BARA).

Severin said Prelog was at the top of the radio tower, attached by a safety belt, when it fell down sideways, crashing him to the ground.

Joseph J. Phillips Jr., former Enquirer education reporter and amateur radio columnist, died June 20 of a pulmonary embolism at his home here. He was 68.

Mr. Phillips retired from a 28-year career as an English teacher for the Princeton Schools in 1999.

He reported on education for The Enquirer in 1970-1971. During the 1980s, he wrote a twice-monthly column for the paper called "Ham call."