My name is Mark Klein KM6AOW
The first time I got involved in ham radio was way back in the 60s.
I must have been nine/ten years old, I was riding around on a bicycle. And I was always interested in electronics and things like that. And I just happened to see this house that had this big antenna on top of the house. And it was moving. And kids, they’ll go up and they’ll knock on the door and that’s what I did it. I stopped my bike. I was riding on a bicycle. I stopped and knocked on the door.
Hello, I see your antenna moving. Can you tell me what’s going on?
The guy says, yeah, I’m into ham radio and I’m working a station and anyway, so he became my Elmer effectively. He helped me build this little radio to listen to you know, what was going on the ham bands. And his name was Mr. Sadler. I’ll never forget that. And that kind of got me started.
Back in the days I was the youngest ham in Michigan at the time. I got my Novice license back in the days when – I can’t remember it was one year/two years – and you had to upgrade and if you didn’t upgrade you were out. And needless to say, I didn’t upgrade so I was a two-year ham in the 60s.
I have a grandkid and I thought – You might be interested in doing something with grandpa. So that was what triggered me to get relicensed in 2015 2016 something like that. It turns out he had no interest in ham radio, so I got relicensed and I just got involved again. So there was like 40 years in between my licenses.
I like deploying out with the portable stuff. I like working stations wherever I can. I don’t do a lot of HF right now. I did a lot of digital FT8. It turns out that I’m the guy that teaches Winlink and a bunch of the digital stuff for RACES and Steve and I compete here at the club for being the digital mavens.
I know in this day and age everybody thinks the analog stuff is dead – they want the digital stuff. That’s one of the reasons why I do a lot of digital ham radio. I’ve had an idea and I haven’t been able to bring it full circle. The idea is to be able to take the AREDN network digital stuff that we’re setting up and be able to demonstrate to a couple of kids how you can play a game with your neighbors over your local radio as opposed to using the Internet. And that might get them interested in getting further involved – in at least from the digital side digital radio. And then maybe they could get interested in the analog stuff at that point. You’ve got to get them in the door somehow and I don’t know how to do that other than showing them what they like and they like, you know, they want to sit in front of a game console all day long with the flashing colors and all that stuff. You know, that’s the only way I think you can get new people involved.
I’m a technologist. I’ve been in technology since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I retired a couple years ago and still can’t get my hands out of it.
You know, I’ve doing lots of things with technology – digital ham radio being part of the technology that interests me. Also a musician and sooner or later we’re gonna have to get the “Ham Band” going!
Recorded on June 27, 2026 @ Field Day in Novato, CA
