I got my amateur radio license three decades ago, and recently upgraded to my Extra license, the top tier in ham radio, after I retired. It was a grueling test that involved a lot of complex math, including imaginary numbers like the square root of -1, which does not exist in real math, because it tells us how our antennas are working. The test is hard because we operate next to the police, aircraft and fire bands, and a bad transmitter or antenna can knock them off the air. We still use the Morse Code signals for 73 (Best Wishes) and 30 (End of Transmission) that were developed by railroads in the 1850s because long conversations on CW are tedious and the Q codes are short and sweet. We even have our own version of LOL. It’s Hi Hi, or dit dit dit dit _ dit dit, which sounds like Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits. It is a great hobby and I am learning a lot about geography. In the past month, I have communicated with Banaba Island, which is a coral reef in the South Pacific, Slovenia, Indonesia and a place called the Kingdom of Eswatini. Yes, there is such a place, it was previously called Swaziland. This is not CB radio, and hams are a great bunch of people. If police radios get knocked out by a tornado, we take our radios to them and set up our towers. We chase tornadoes because the National Weather Service needs real time information when a tornado touches down. We have a network of antennas across Colorado because some people do not have cell towers, and it is monitored around the clock for emergency traffic. During Hurricane Ian, the Federal Communications Commission used two of our frequencies so people could call for help and talk to their families. We can bounce radio signals off the moon, talk to the International Space Station and communicate using satellites. It is a great hobby, so I’ll say 73 and QRT, which is Bye Bye for Now. This is KB0KUC with my XYL, my wife Torrey, KB0KWS. (I know it’s sexist, XYL is ex-young lady in Morse Code, Hi Hi).