Issue #21: Hams and Our Most Important Relationships (Part One)

Thank you to everyone for a rousing response to the online survey from QRZ about our most important relationships . . . how our partners/spouses feel about the hobby. It's a fascinating response. Part One deals with the first half of the Q's and provides some examples, some very serious and others absolutely hilarious, from our XYLs about ham radio. Please join me here in commenting about the topic. Dave, W7DGJ ("Trials and Errors -- Ham Life with an Amateur.")

 

Well, I forwarded that survey link to my wife when you floated the idea a couple weeks back, and I actually have no idea if she took the survey or not....she never said; I never asked. But I will say this: your comment about the antenna situation at your QTH is identical to what my wife has decreed as well. Hard to see wires are fine; stringing wires between the trees and "nature colored" fiberglass masts is perfectly acceptable. Keeping my antenna projects confined to our side yard that has no view worth mentioning is OK. But building a huge tower out front or back and disrupting the views of the valley below are strictly VERBOTEN!! It's not my house, it's OURS. (In fact, truth be told, this house & property are more hers than mine, since my wife is the Navy vet by which we got our VA loan through, while I was the stay at home dad.) So, happy wife....happy life, and I don't challenge the rules.

Also, you mentioned "breaking even" or expending minimal funds in the hobby now. As a firearms dealer and pseudo-collector, my wife is well accustomed to boxes coming and going all the time. Since we got married, we have always maintained separate checking accounts for our own personal usage, as well as a joint "family" account for bills, mortgage, utilities, etc. So, she has her expensive hobby (quilting) and I have mine, and neither the two shall mix. Granted, I have several expensive hobbies whereas she only has the one, but still...it all works out in the end.

 

Your links are circular.

The link in your OP takes you to a page, where, when invited to comment - links back here. Was this by design?
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After being married for 48 years, we have come to a series of 'accommodations'. Mine being the use of (mostly) CW and a set of cans for a kind of quiet hobby, she does as she wishes. We are fortunate enough to have a bit more income than our needs and are completely debt free.
We hope that happy circumstance continues.

The work/life balance thing so often talked about applies even in retirement.
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My only comments on the subject, based on other's posts are:
1) If you are trash taking your mate, in public forums no less, I cannot imagine what kind of relationship - or lack thereof - you are currently in...
2) While active military and later, working in the local industry, I told my wife we both needed a 'hobby' for the days when we both stopped working out of the house.

Once the kids are gone and both partners have retired, you should have an activity/hobby that is (hopefully) inexpensive, easy to do, keeps one mentally active and provides some kind of pleasure, even if just for what you think is a job well done. Gardening, ham radio, volunteering at a local NGO/church/charity/etc or whatever else may work. Even better, if both partners can do this activity together it can make life much more appealing.

Ham radio can and should be just one aspect of a life well lived. NOT the only one.

 

Thanks Don. I appreciate the fix you suggested on the links. These forums also stand alone on QRZ's forum section, so the first post I make has to have a reference in it to the column we are discussing. I put the link on the wrong line of text. Anyway, appreciated and it's now not "circular."
As an aside, this was totally anonymous so XYL's who are griping are not doing so in a public forum. However, they knew it was a survey leading to a publication, so if a person says something that has been said to the spouse many times about the truck looking like a porcupine, he might recognize it. But that's the only tie-in. I set it up so that we'd get REAL responses. I was surprised at what a nice percentage of hams have a ham spouse. I think, I'll quote exact in final summary, that it was about 18-20%of respondents. Dave

 

My spouse will never get ham radio and does tolerate my love of radio!!! Her one comment i hear after 30 yrs is "you have too many wires and cables in there!! (My shack) I cant win so i don t try LOL!!!

 

Thanks, Dave, for part one. It's nice to see that there is a lot of support between hams and our XYLs. Part 2 should be interesting. I'll venture a guess and say that the old expression applies in a ham's life, "if they say it's not about the money...it's about the money".

 

Hey Larry - thanks! And I've heard that before, and know how and where that expression comes from! Dave

 

Charlie, I've had that comment for years. I just close the door on the shack so she doesn't have to look. She DOES, however, have a point in that it was a nice guest room before I took it over and filled it with those wires and cables!

 

My wife is not interested at all in getting her tech. However, after an incident where she missed a trail turnoff when she was hiking down ahead of me after a SOTA activation did push us over the edge to GMRS. Had we not had cell service on Sharptop Mountain I would have had to rely on whistle signals and yelling. I had a visual on here along a trail farther down the mountainside about 200 yards away, but it could have been worse.

Since then she always carries a GMRS radio when hiking with me, and we also use them when out camping at state parks. There have been a couple of other incidents where she told me to hike ahead and she needed some assistance and the radios came in handy vs trying to use a cell phone. Just PTT and we're instantly connected vs stopping, digging the phone out, dialing, and then the other having to do the same.

She has no issues with me going out for SPOTA activations alone or with my SOTA team, be it a day or overnight trip. She also has no issues with me hanging out in the shack. While we share some common interests, she has her unique interests and I have mine. It would be a boring relationship if we had everything in common.

 

My XYL recently brought the survey up the instant I asked for help tuning a dipole for 75 metres for Field Day.

It was reinforced that there will BE NO ANTENNAS anywhere but the east yard/pasture/paddock.



Next thing I knew it was suggested the ham shack be moved to the barn where my shop is-whereupon I indicated that environmental controls are necessary.

At this point, I'm not exactly sure just how it's going to play out, but while I'm doin' alright with a 4BTV in the back drive, I'm not gonna be satisfied forever with just that.

Time will tell, but sometime, remaining married is a daily exercise. Fortunately I'm up for it, I don't want to be single again! She is my second wife and let's be honest, with a guy like me, that lightning' ain't gonna strike a THIRD time! HI HI

 

Hi PT - Sure hope it all works out for you. Dave

 

It could be enlightening to see a similar survey of wives of hunters, fishermen and golfers for comparison.

 

Good point . . . I think, however, that hunting, fishing and so on . . . those are "manly" activities that the other sex would have no issues with marrying into. Radio is a bit different. That one spouse who described her prospective husband as "rather like a nerd, with antennas sprouting off his truck that made it look like a porcupine," and so on -- she'd probably have had none of those feelings if it had been a set of golf clubs in the back of the truck. Many of them consider it a strange hobby, it's not clear that it's universally understood as hunting or fishing, golfing would be. Dave

 

I've been a ham since I was 14 years old, and started shortwave listening and collecting QSL cards when I was maybe 9 or 10. Ham radio is in my DNA and I can't get rid of it. And I'm now approaching 65 and probably somewhat set in my ways. Still -- I treat my hobby as just that -- a hobby. Under no circumstances do I permit my enjoyment of ham radio (which in recent years has been mostly boat anchor restoration) to interfere with my far more important relationship with my wife -- who is actually very supportive and has her own hobbies (such as gardening and knitting). I'm a firm believer in balance and keeping things like antennas in the yard to something reasonable. No one really needs a beam at 50 feet, anyways.

73 - Steve, KW4H

 

I agree 100 percent with this point of view. Unlike golf, fishing, hunting, or many other more well-known and "psychologically acceptable" hobbies, radio is weird. It's one step above stamp collecting.

73 - Steve, KW4H