LINCOLN - In a 24-foot trailer parked at the Blackfoot Valley Bible Church, KD7OQU - who many know as Shawn Horne - fiddles with the radio dial.

Horne, who lives in Helena, was in Lincoln the night the Snow-Talon Fire blew up and sent dozens of residents packing.

By sunrise, the Lincoln church-turned-evacuation-shelter was a busy place, and Horne has been a busy man ever since, helping the American Red Cross and fire officials with Lincoln's communication needs. His radio signals continue to fly through the depths of space to ham radios everywhere, including those eavesdropping in Helena, Missoula and Butte.

"We're providing communication from Lincoln to Helena for this Red Cross evacuation center," Horne said, sitting at the 10-amp power cell inside the trailer. "We'll stay up here as long as we need to."

The "we" in this case refers to K7WES, better known as Wes Rowe, and K7HLN, otherwise known as Bob Solomon. The three ham radio enthusiasts pass the time nibbling homemade chocolate chip cookies while tweaking their radio antennae in search of signals.

From time to time voices crackle through the static. That's Butte, or so Horne says. But the voices sound more like aliens orbiting in a Martian satellite than fellow ham radio operators.

Outside the trailer, Rowe adjusts the antenna while Horne tunes the dial, listening to the feedback as though sending an SOS from the Titanic. When all else fails, Horne smiles and aims his signal toward Great Falls.

So goes the life of an amateur radio operator. But don't discount the role these guys play in disasters.

Licensed by the FCC, the club, which is listed as W7TCK, operates under the Amateur Radio Emergency Services. They spanned communication gaps during Helena's spring floods, the Governor's Cup, and more recently the Jimtown Fire. Now they're making their presence known during the fires of 2003.

"The other thing we can do is use a combination of radios and repeaters as a back-up communication link," Solomon said. "Cell phones don't work up here and landlines are unpredictable."

While they may be the hottest thing to hit the hands of urbanites, turn on a cell phone in Lincoln and all you'll get is a useless "searching" signal. It's just as well - these guys would rather do things by radio.

"I've been in ham radio since 1995," Solomon said. "A lot of the hams in the club are relatively new."

But there is a fellow named Dick Beaton who is rumored to be the oldest member of the club - and the most experienced, too. Beaton has been a licensed ham operator since the 1930s, Solomon said. "His thing is Morse code."

Morse code can be heard bleeping over the airwaves as Horne scans the dial. From this trailer in Lincoln, the multi-ban, multi-mode digital transceiver sends signals to a temporary repeater set up at Hooper Park down the road.

From there, the signals make a monumental leap over the Continental Divide to Mount Belmont, and then to a traveling base in Helena, which often can be found in the basement of a fellow club member.

To find out more about W7TCK, or to become a member of the Capital City Amateur Radio Club, check out their Web page at www.W7TCK.org.

Reporter Martin Kidston can be reached at 447-4086, or by e-mail at mkidston@helenair.com