He strung an antenna nearby and began to signal. In a matter of minutes, set up on an ordinary picnic bench, he was contacting fellow radio enthusiasts from Hawaii to Western Europe. Bill Wetherill of Wilmington communicates halfway around the world, using signals weaker than the wattage of a bathroom night light. And they're among hundreds of fans in clubs throughout Southeastern North Carolina, fine-tuning their talents and making friends worldwide. And, in times of emergency, they can be lifesavers.
Amateur radio is one of the nation's oldest hobbies.
It's been nearly a century since inventor Guglielmo Marconi broadcast the first wireless telegraph signal across the Atlantic Ocean. Decades later, ham radio is still coming in loud and clear, with more than 675,000 licensed operators in the United States and perhaps 2.5 million worldwide. In fact, veterans in the field are expecting a burst of new popularity in the next few years. These storms hurl vast quantities of charged electrical particles through space, where they collide with the Earth's atmosphere. A second, more lasting change in the ham scene came on April 15, when new U.S. regulations on amateur radio went into effect.