In an era of mobile phones and social media, some people in Santa Cruz are celebrating a communications medium used in the county since 1916.
The Santa Cruz County Amateur Radio Club noted its 100thanniversary at the Museum of Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz on Saturday.
The ham radio club, made up of licensed radio operators, is still going strong in 2016.
Ham radios allow people all over the world to talk to each other without cell phones or the internet.
And while they’ve been around a long time, ham radios can play a critical role in case of a natural disaster like an earthquake and all normal communications like cell phones fail or get overloaded.
“Officials, in their emergency operating center, depend on amateur radio for the first hour or so to get basic information,” said John Charcho, a ham radio operator who lives in Ben Lomond.
Full Article here. Congratulations SCCARC!