Bailey, 94, stays tuned to the world
Published Saturday July 4th, 2009
Claude Bailey sits in his armchair adjusting dials, reciting bandwidths and showing off a room full of amateur radio equipment that's taken a lifetime to collect.
At age 94, Bailey, or VE1HU as fellow ham radio operators know him, has enough technical knowledge to stump even the most tech-savvy 20-somethings.
He's the architect of many of the province's original telecommunication lines, one of the oldest ham radio operators in the region and he's even built his own computer, although it sits unused on his floor.
He said it's the challenge of building and dissecting something that interests him.
"We use to make most of our own stuff," Bailey said. "There were no transistors. You would buy vacuum tubes, batteries and a few things like that, and then you would take it from there and make your own receiver or transmitter or whatever.
"That's what I like about it, the technical side. I never particularly wanted to talk to anybody; I just wanted to see how it worked and figure it out. There is always something new to learn."
Bailey has been experimenting with radio for 75 years.
In the late 1940s, as a Department of Forestry employee, he convinced his boss to keep a bunch of old wartime radios that came as part of a package deal with several bulldozers the department was buying.
"I went to him and said Forestry may want them someday - and sure enough," he said.
Bailey changed those radios from 24-volt battery-operated models meant for airplanes to AC models that plug into a power supply.
They used them to establish communication lines between Department of Forestry locations around New Brunswick.
Bailey later became the radio communications supervisor for the province. He established an FM repeater atop Crabbe Mountain, a 300-foot (91-metre) structure, and helped establish some of the first communications lines for the New Brunswick Highway Patrol and the province's ambulances and hospitals, before retiring in 1985.
"Back then none of the departments had radio, so they had me running all over the place," he said.
"I put in a point-to-point system running all around the province and it was really the beginning. It isn't around anymore, but all the new stuff has pretty much followed the same path."
Bailey is still at it today.
He has set up three transmitters in his backyard and keeps in touch with Joan Powell, his daughter in Ottawa, on a daily basis.
Powell, also a ham radio enthusiast, serves on the board for the Quarter Century Wireless Association, an international amateur radio organization.
She credits her father for sparking her interest in the hobby.
"I sort of inherited it from him," she said. "We talk pretty much every day over it and we keep to a schedule that we are about 90 per cent accurate to."
Al Thurber, another ham radio operator who met Bailey 40 years ago, said he's in awe of Bailey's technical knowledge even later in life.
"There is not too many people around like him. He is one of a kind," he said.
"I pick his brain every once in a while, and I remember a couple years ago taking a radio to him that I just couldn't fix and a few days later he called me and said it was all fixed, so he is still quite capable."
Thurber said Bailey is probably the second oldest ham radio operator in Atlantic Canada, but he may be one of the sharpest.
For his part, Bailey said his hobby is just that.
Recently, he was listening in on a man in California, had just finished talking to another in England and said he talks to fellow ham radio operators from all corners of the world every day.
And at 94, he has no plans to sign off.
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