Hamming it up

When one is standing on the shore of the Upper North Platte River, the sounds one expects to hear would be the songs of birds. On one warm summer weekend, June 23, a different sound joined the avian melodies. The arrhythmic beeps of morse code and the whitenoise of an amateur radio in search of other stations could be heard on the property of the Ryan Ranch. The ranch owned by Greg Ryan, who also owns Ryan Electronics, was playing host to the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day.

"What we do here, specifically, and what I do a lot when I go out and activate parks is you're taking a radi...