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Love on the air

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Contributed by: Glenn Pladsen on 2/9/2007

Glenn AE0Q had been a ham radio operator for many years when he started a new job in late 1998. One of the benefits of the job was the use of a tall, large radio antenna where he worked, and in December 1998 he operated an international radio contest. A ham radio contest has thousands of Amateur Radio operators around the world trying to contact as many hams as possible in one weekend. During many hours at the radio that weekend Glenn contacted more than a thousand other enthusiasts on the radio.

Ham operators love to exchange cards after a radio contact and that is a big part of the hobby for many of them. In the next few weeks, Glenn received many cards from hams wishing to confirm their contact with Colorado. One of the nicer cards was from a ham in North Carolina, KF4OAD Merri, with whom he had exchanged contact information in the contest on voice. Glenn also used CW (Morse code) for many of the contacts. He could tell from the callsign that the NC ham was fairly new to the hobby, so when he sent his card he wrote "hope to see you on CW too." Many new hams stick to using voice and he was hoping to encourage this ham to also try Morse.

Unknown to Glenn, Merri had just passed her 13-word-per-minute Morse code test, but was too scared to use CW on the radio. For months she had been looking for someone with whom she could practice on the air ... all to no avail. She looked him up on the Internet and he didn't look too weird or scary, so she popped off an e-mail telling him of her CW dilemma.

They scheduled a time to try to contact each other on the radio, but had difficulty hearing each other with her lousy apartment antenna. Glenn mailed her a different kind of antenna to try, and soon they were chatting away on Morse code. CW contacts led to e-mails, telephone calls and cross-country flights. On August 25, 2000, Glenn and Merri were married in Golden, Colorado! Merri KF4OAD changed her callsign to reflect her new location and she is now AB0MV.

Notes from Merri:
Two weeks before the December '98 contest, Merri had been working at a ham station in her local Red Cross shelter with a married ham friend. She told him that she had absolutely no intention of getting married and was perfectly content being single and not doing the dating thing and not having some man interfering with her radio life. Despite her insistence, the meeting with Glenn could not have been more fortuitous. During her adolescence, she filled up journal after journal asking "why can't men be like ...?" If the journals were around today, it would be a PERFECT description of her husband, Glenn.

Notes from Glenn:
During the many years Glenn had been involved in Amateur Radio, he had occasionally heard of couples meeting via the radio. The chance of that seemed so remote that he never thought it could happen to him. He had never found the woman he wanted to share his life with until he met Merri. Her love of books, her artistic creativeness and her gentle, caring personality drew him to her and she became the love of his life as the months progressed.

[This is not a duplicate entry. The story was written by Glenn and Merri together and thus posted under both our names.]

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Showing 1 of 1 comments

Submitted By: Seth Davis

posted on 2/13/2007 @ 3:20:32 PM

Rated Story

Now that's a great love story, Glenn and Merri. Thanks for sharing!

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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Glenn Pladsen

Arvada , CO

Glenn Pladsen has posted 6 stories and 9 comments since joining on 12/22/2006. Glenn Pladsen 's average story rating is 5.

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