Ham Radio Los Angeles

For 11 glorious days America's most notorious ham was in hog heaven.

Amateur radio hobbyist Richard A. Burton-the only person to ever go to jail for talking on ham frequencies without a license-was back on the airwaves after a 15-year banishment by the Federal Communications Commission.

"I'm legal, " Burton shouted into his transmitter microphone as ham radio operators across Los Angeles listened in amazement. " . . . KF6GKS is clear."

Not quite.

Burton barely had time to tack his new license to the wall of his Harbor City apartment this fall before red-faced FCC officials in Gettysburg, Pa., revoked it. His new call sign had been issued by mistake, they said. He would have to unplug his radio immediately.

As suddenly as ham radio station KF6GKS was on the air, it was off.

And now the dispute is crackling across local amateur radio frequencies as hobbyists debate whether the FCC will ever reissue a license to Burton-and whether Burton can keep his hands off his microphone until the agency does.

Few expect either to happen.

Talking on ham radio "is an addictive hobby, " acknowledged Burton. "It's my connection with the outside world. It's my form of social interaction."

But it's an obsession that has made Burton a near-mythic figure among hams. Not only is he the only amateur operator to be sentenced to federal prison for talking on the radio, he's been locked up twice for the same offense.

In 1992, Burton even went so far as to suggest that Ronald Reagan may have been behind his original run-in with the FCC after one of his broadcasts, according to some, got piped into the loudspeaker system at the Bel-Air church where the president-elect was attending Sunday services in 1979. Reagan at the time denied recollection of any involvement.

The FCC and Burton, a disabled 53-year-old electronics technician, have been at odds since 1981, when officials yanked his first ham radio license after he was caught cursing on the air. He had been broadcasting from Canoga Park, his home at the time.

Burton kept talking, however. And although the obscenity issue was eventually resolved in his favor, he was convicted in federal court in 1982 of transmitting without a license. He was sentenced to 6 1/2 months in federal prison.

Unlike citizens band radio users, who don't need a license, amateur-band radio hobbyists are allowed to use high-powered transmitters if they pass a written test. They are authorized to use even longer-range equipment if they pass additional exams and Morse Code tests.

When his probation ended in 1989, he immediately took the test for a new license. But before the FCC acted on the application, government investigators caught Burton illegally broadcasting once more. Pleading in court for "forgiveness and mercy, " Burton escaped a return to prison-but was fined $2, 000 and put on another year's probation.