When Mike Tesky of Kennewick blew a tire on his trailer in the middle of Montana, he didn’t call for a tow. He keyed up his radio. A fellow ham operator picked up the call, helped him limp into town, and fixed his tire and brakes at a discount. Twenty years later, they’re still friends, and Tesky radios ahead every time he passes through.

It’s the kind of connection the 78-year-old retired Hanford worker has made across decades on the air – with strangers across the globe, astronauts on the International Space Station, and, closer to home, stranded hunters and flood victims in Benton City. 

For Tesky and thousands like him, amateur radio is part social network, part emergency lifeline.

A lifelong interest

Tesky got started in electronics as a kid in the Tri-Cities, and the interest has helped define his career as well as his military service and his longtime love affair with ham radios.

Ham radio is different from citizens band, or CB, radio. CB requires no license and is limited to a range of a few miles, making it popular with truckers and off-roaders for local chatter.

Amateur radio, or ham, operators must pass an Federal Communications Commission exam and, once licensed, can transmit across a wide range of frequencies and distances, which is what makes the hobby useful well beyond a CB’s line-of-sight limits. Tesky, who got into ham radio at age 12, was inspired by a local Boy Scout event, as well as the scouting requirement to learn Morse code. 

His exposure to electronics began before that when he tagged along with his dad to help change out old fuse panels and put in electric heating when Richland’s government-owned houses were sold to the public in the 1950s. 

He began working in electronics shops after school in junior high and became a licensed ham radio operator at the age of 18.

He said he joined the Navy after high school because it had the best electronics program.

It was a whirlwind: “I went in, actually graduated on a Friday night, was on the bus Sunday morning to Spokane, was sworn into the Navy Monday morning and got my draft notice that Wednesday.” 

It was 1967 and he had just turned 19. 

He spent six years in the Navy as an electronics technician, with three years on the USS Orion, a submarine tender. 

After Tesky returned to the Tri-Cities, he began work at the Hanford site, where he worked as an instrument technician for 35 years. He retired 19 years ago and has spent much of his time traveling across the country. 

He’s also stayed active in the community, working with the Boy Scouts, volunteering 40 years with the Red Cross, and helping out at community events. He’s been involved with the Boy Scouts since he was 8 – and still helps out at a Scouting event he attended as a child, the Jamboree on the Air, now in its 69th year.

Across the airwaves

Tesky’s ham radio license lapsed while he was in the Navy since, at the time, operators had to use their five-year license to renew it. Now, licenses are good for 10 years. 

When he got back into the hobby in the ’90s, Tesky picked back up right where he left off, including using the same equipment he’d had as a kid. That’s when his wife got into the hobby, too, and now on long drives, they might each be talking on one of the two radios in their car. 

When he’s on the road, he and his wife display their call signs on the back of their car or trailer so that any ham operators, or “hams,” behind them can say hello. 

They’ll often coordinate a stop together, have lunch and chat. 

“That’s kind of the group you have out there as far as hams,” he said. “You don’t know last names in most instances. You know their call sign, you know a first name, and that’s it. But you become immediate friends.”

Friends around the world

Through ham radio, Tesky has talked with people across the world, from Finland and France to Africa and Australia, and contacted astronauts aboard the International Space Station. 

It’s led to chance encounters, too, like a history professor in Odesa who knew of the Ukrainian village Tesky’s ancestors settled in. 

Another time, Tesky was driving home from the Hanford site when he spoke on the radio with someone from West Virginia who had been in Walla Walla during World War II, dropping practice bombs near West Richland’s Bombing Range Road. 

The hobby has a more serious side as well, Tesky said. He and his wife have a cabin in the Blue Mountains with no cell service, but with radio, they’re able to keep in contact with each other and report lost hunters and dogs, forest fires and injured big game. On the road, they’re able to call in car accidents. 

Tesky’s offered his help while passing through Montana during a flood and served as a radio operator and helped with damage assessments in Benton City during floods in 1996. 

Over the years, he’s taught thousands of others first aid, CPR and ham radio. To him, the community service is just his nature. 

“It’s just that’s what you do,” he said. 

Ham lives on

Ham radio lives on, though some things have changed. 

Some regulations used to be more stringent, requiring operators to keep a logbook listing the time, frequency, power and more every time they transmitted a signal, Tesky said. Hams had to start as novices with no voice privileges, using only Morse code.

Now, those interested in a license can easily access online study materials to prepare for the test. 

A technician license is the most basic, with certain voice and power restrictions, while a general license opens up more frequencies and operating modes, and an extra license has the most privileges.

Tesky said it’s a hobby you can invest in as much as you want. A basic radio bought from Amazon could run $30 to $40, or you could spend $10,000. He said it depends on what you want to do, since basic radios likely will be voice only and have limited reach.

There are even apps to use your cellphone as a radio – but you need a license to use them.

While the hobby may seem outdated to some, Tesky said that people are still getting into it. Some find an appeal in the emergency preparation aspect: if cell towers or the internet are unusable, radio is still an option. 

The local Tri-Cities Amateur Radio Club meets the first Monday of each month at 7 p.m. at the Confluent Makerspace at 285 Williams Blvd., Richland. They’ll talk about meetups and cover some aspect of ham radio operations in a classroom-type lesson. 

The club meets annually for a field day, where everyone sets up in the field, and there are other types of radio events throughout the world, including groups called nets that host daily on-air meetings. A special Washington event, called the Salmon Run, involves trying to make radio contact with someone in each county in a 24-hour time period, he said. 

A number of young people are involved in the local club, too, Tesky said – including an 8-year-old girl who already has her license – so it appears the future of the club is in good hands.