Most hams love a good joke. Go to any hamfest or spend some time with a group on Field Day and you’ll soon learn that talk of frequencies is often interspersed with frequent, good-natured laughter.
DX Engineering gets into the spirit, too. Want to draw a few chuckles from your amateur radio buddies? We suggest this T-Shirt available exclusively from DX Engineering:
Based on this customer review of the shirt, ham humor is not appreciated by everyone:
“Looks and feels great. My wife did not find it funny at all.”
Joseph – DX Engineering Customer
OnAllBands has had our share of fun posting bogus news items on April Fool’s Day that certainly elicited a few exasperated sighs of “Are you kidding me?” followed by laughs once the joke was revealed.
Our favorite came from Tom, KB8UUZ, DX Engineering technical writer, who wrote about the latest DXCC entity, Micro Pohnie Islands, which appropriately lie east of Yap Island, whose name sounds like what a loquacious ham might do with a Heil boom mic headset and some time to kill.
For geography buffs, OnAllBands has searched but found no location known as Rag-Chew Atoll.
A Truly Royal Amateur Radio Prank
When it comes to amateur radio-related April Fool’s spoofs, though, it’s hard to top the pint of foam-topped mischief that Guinness pulled off on April Fool’s Eve 1998.
On March 30, the famous brewer of stout beer (est. 1759 in Dublin, Ireland), sent a press release to major newspapers announcing that it had reached an agreement with the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, to be the official beer sponsor of the observatory’s millennium celebration.
As noted on the Museum of Hoaxes website, the agreement between the brewery and observatory, famously known for keeping Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, Zulu, UTC, Military, etc.), included the stipulation that Greenwich Mean Time would be renamed Guinness Mean Time until the end of 1999. The name was based on the company’s slogan, “It’s Guinness Time.”
Further, instead of counting seconds in “pips,” the observatory would be counting them in “pint drops.” As if this weren’t enough to alert press release recipients that this wasn’t on the up and up, the pranksters also noted that the observatory would now feature a Guinness bar, and the countdown to the millennium would feature a Guinness clock counting “pint settling time” with a two-minute stopwatch.
While sent on March 30, newspapers were told to hold off on its release until April 1. But that didn’t stop the highly respected Financial Times from writing about the false—and rather hilarious—news the day before April Fool’s Day in an article entitled “Guinness to Sponsor the Old Royal Observatory.” Clueless of the joke, the article criticized Guinness for shamelessly exploiting millennium fervor to further its brand and “setting a brash tone for the millennium.”
In response, the Financial Times sheepishly printed a short retraction. Guinness pointed out that it wasn’t the fault of the reporter, who was writing a serious business piece but was caught off guard when the brewery “faxed over the spoof among other information.”
Read all about Greenwich Mean Time in this article from OnAllBands.
A Parting Shot
Here’s another bit of April Fool’s fun courtesy of Tom, KB8UUZ: Try to spot the anachronistic piece of ham radio gear in the wireless radio room at Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio—only a short path to DX Engineering headquarters and retail showroom inside Summit Racing Equipment. The radio room is part of a special tour of the 64,500 square-foot Tudor Revival home of Franklin Augustus Seiberling, co-founder of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The third-floor room was where F. A. Seiberling’s youngest son, Franklin, Jr., 8AHF/8BCY, plied his craft in the early days of amateur radio. For the answer, click on this product link to DXEngineering.com.
All kidding aside, when you want serious help from experienced hams who offer friendly service and no-nonsense advice, turn to DX Engineering. You’ll find transceivers, antennas, tuners, towers, and more for DXing, contesting, rag-chewing, and emergency communications that are anything but a laughing matter.
