When I was about 13 years old, I obtained a ham radio license.   It was quite the subculture to find oneself in, immersed in terms like "QSO" and "73's" and other oddities that most non-radio folks have never heard of.  Kind of like fraternal handshakes.  They seem weird to outsiders, but a familiar greeting to the initiated.

My neighbors were not happy.  My first transmitter was a Globe King 400C, which looked something like this:

First of all, I was on the air about 12 hours a day, and second of all this thing turned their TV screens blank when I did my "dah-dit-dah-dit" messaging all over creation. When I wasn't on the radio, I was on the roof fiddling with home-made antennas.  I don't think they appreciated that much, either.  They did get a break for a while, though. One day, I hooked the Globe King up to transmit AM. See that middle deck?  Blammo, fire. I ran out to my folks' RV camper and grabbed the fire extinguisher, to my mentor's chagrin, I had flame-retardant powder all over this "boat anchor." So, the other weird thing I encountered in this hobby, other than listening to the "Russian woodpecker," was a"QSO" (that's ham radio talk for "conversation") that put my picture in the paper.  I spoke with folks at the People's Temple of Grape Koolaid fame in Guyana.  I've got a card somewhere to prove it, but you can look at this one.  It looks pretty much the same.  What's pretty interesting is that I got the card in the mail about a week before they did themselves in.

Anyway, I was WD5FWX, which I thought was an awful callsign, so when I upgraded my license, I picked another one, KB5GC, which I still have.

[edit July 2005] -- callsign now W1CEW. Look for me on the upper HF bands, though I just obtained a "new" HF rig, IC-746, so may be on 6m soon!