Sharing Grids

This week the amateur radio satellite community was saddened to learn that Wade Stuart, N0TEL, had gone silent key. Those of us who had the opportunity to contact Wade on the radio knew him as an exemplary operator, an all around nice guy, and a prolific rover.

Amateur radio operators sometimes use the Maidenhead Locator System, which divides the earth's surface into grid squares, to describe location. A set of latitude and longitude coordinates describes a single point on the earth; a grid square describes a region. I live in grid square DM13. San Francisco is in CM87, Chicago is in EN61, and most of New York is in FN30. For those amateur radio operators who like to communicate via satellite (there are dozens of satellites on orbit with amateur radio payloads), certificates and awards can be earned by contacting stations in as many grid squares as possible. Some operators will travel (roving, in amateur radio parlance) to sparsely populated grid squares for the purpose of giving other operators a chance to log an otherwise rare grid square.

I can't claim to have known Wade well. I know that we both liked baseball. I know that we both liked fishing. I know that he gave me a bunch of grid squares and that I gave him quite a few. I know that I always enjoyed hearing his friendly voice on the air. Aside from that, we lived thousands of kilometers apart and were in completely different lines of work and would likely have had little reason ever to meet were it not for amateur radio. But that's the whole point, isn't it? The great promise of amateur radio is to bring together people from all different places and from all different backgrounds in the mutual enjoyment of learning the art and the science and the technology of electronic communication. 

In a time when we so easily get caught up in our differences, we can and should live up to this promise, to understand and respect our differences but also to come together and celebrate our common humanity. And we could use a few more operators like Wade.

73 ES CUL SK N0TEL DE W6KSR AR

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