Unexpected Fame

Unexpected Fame was Originally Posted on February 22, 2014 by lavarock

Decades ago I was living in Maryland and a Ham Radio operator. We used to be involved in many activities where we could provide communications. In fact, part of our group was headed to the Air Florida disaster (to help provide communications between police, fire and rescue personnel). We were stopped short of helping because a Metro subway car was stuck in between stations due to ice and we had no way downtown.

One happier event was the annual Cherry Blossom Parade in DC. We would station Hams along the route with walkies-talkies and set up a base station in a central location to coordinate the activities. We would coordinate when the floats would step off with the parade coordinator who was constantly changing locations.

One year I was one of the Net Controllers, the main communicator of the group. We used the base station of the Smithsonian Institute which was located in their American History building behind a glass window (both to keep people from playing with the equipment and to keep noise away from the radio mike).

As the parade progressed and I helped direct stations to move and so on, I found that there were a couple of stations who were weak in audio. I sat there listening carefully to the headset, staring out upon Archie Bunkers chair from the TV show All In The Family. It was then that the whole event came into focus for me. A couple was walking nearby, looking at the chair and then at me inside a glassed window, where a sign under the glass read something like NN3SI standing for Nation of Nations, Smithsonian Institution. When I heard what I needed to and raised the mike to my lips, the couple seemed startled. They had assumed I was a mannequin as many of the other exhibits contained.

So I guess I can say that I was once an exhibit at the Smithsonian!

read more about the station and its shutting down here: http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-station-at-smithsonian-going-qrt-after-32-years