January 21st 2019 marked my 20th year in Amateur Radio!
My interest in Amateur Radio started years before. I had got a police scanner for Christmas one year. Before I had a list of stuff to program i hit search just to see what i could hear. The first thing it picked up was the 145.350 KX4I repeater in Tuscaloosa, of coarse at the time i had not clue what it was. I just hear people chit chatting on there. Over the next few months i continued to listen and learned quite a bit from the hams that talked on that repeater.
I found other repeaters to listen to over time time and had a great time. I also found out I had a relative who was a Ham and I got up with him to find out more about the hobby. Leland Hartley WR4O, came to visit and he showed me his 2 meter radio. He had a custom mic on it that was a an old style Telephone handle that had a PTT on the hand grip. I was fascinated.
I still didn’t get my license right away. I don’t really remember any specific reason that made me start wanting my license after so many years of listening.
It wasn’t until I had completed a year of college. I had just finished a fall semester of 1998 and was going to have a few weeks off when I started studying for the Technician (entry level) class. At the time there were 6 license classes. A month later after talking with some other Radio operators I was ready to take the test. One Friday night the Tuscaloosa Amateur Radio club was giving a test session so I drove up to some church just before the Northport bridge on HWY 69. I got to meet some of the Hams that I heard on my scanner over the past few years. The test was easy because i was really prepared! I think I only missed one or two questions. Over the next week I checked qrz.com to see if my license had been granted. I don’t remember exactly when but it finally showed up and my callsign was KG4BQK. I ended up getting a mobile radio the Yaesu FT-2500M which I used a long time prior to my HF rig. After that I dedicated it for APRS for several year but currently not using it. I’m thinking of making it the radio for an Allstar Simplex node but I’m early in the investigation of that now. I had a lot of fun programming in the repeaters I used to listen to and getting to finally join in on what everyone was talking about. One of my favorite things to do was check into the AICN link net. At this time the AICN was a link system that covered the entire state of Alabama. The system is no longer around at least in that form.
When I graduated college in 2001 and was on a 5 month job search, I took the opportunity to upgrade. The license classes had changed so now there were only 3 licence classes. I got my General and Extra almost back to back. Studying for 5 WPM morse code was a difficult thing for me. I was very opposed to having to know such an archaic means of communication just to get a higher license class. What funny is once i got into it i really enjoyed morse code. I easily passed the code portion and the question pools weren’t that difficult either. I got a yaesu FT-100D for HF communications. At a ham fest I got a paddle and I used CW a few times on the air. I ended up applying for my current callsign KV4S because I wanted a short callsign to reflect all my hard work!
The rest is history! The next couple years I got interested in SKYWARN and now I’m active with the ALERT group in Birmingham. They assist the National Weather Service in getting storm reports from spotters in the field.
I’ve gotten into the digital modes and run personal nodes as well all of which I talk about on this site!
73,
Russell Thomas, KV4S
KV4S 
Congrats on 20 years. I’m approaching 30 years with mine. de kd1s.
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