While mostly ignored and left to their devices, HAM Radio operators provide several essential services, such as providing military personnel in hazardous duty postings overseas a means of talking to their families. When other communications fail, it is the HAM Radio operators who provide emergency communications to the nations.
Yet HAM Radio may be in trouble. It appears that there are those in government service who don’t like the idea of a group of people who can do things the government can’t do for themselves; and HAM Radio operators have a long history of doing just that. When Admiral Byrd led his expedition to the South Pole, the Navy couldn’t maintain contact with him. But a HAM Radio operator by the name of Collins could, leading that HAM to create the Collins Radio Company to build his equipment and sell it to the Navy.