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  The contact was there. Weak, but definitely there. I’d been listening to him work other stations for ten minutes, waiting for the signal to lift above the noise. When it finally did, I reached behind the radio, grabbed the coax, and started swapping antennas by hand. By the time I’d finished fumbling around under the desk, the signal had gone. Not faded. Gone. I sat there staring at the radio as if it had personally betrayed me. A few minutes later, I heard another operator make the contact with no trouble at all. That made it worse. This wasn’t my first amateur radio mistake, and it certainly wasn’t my last. I’d spent weeks adjusting the HF antenna, moving wires, checking connections and blaming the conditions. The real problem that evening was embarrassingly simple: I had several antennas and no sensible antenna switching arrangement. I’d told myself I didn’t need a ham antenna switch . Reaching behind the desk only took a few seconds. That was true in daylight. It was less tr...