I've been busy spring cleaning and finally found my ham license issued to me in the spring of 1990 while I was stationed in Slovakia. My call at that time was
OK8AIO and I got to use it a few times from the Technical University of Kosice ham station. A few of the student hams helped me obtain a license to operate there.
The photos are from Wenceslaus Square in Prague, during the final days leading to the election.
I did manage to make a few contacts back to Ottawa with a list of ham gear to be sent to me. A packet tnc and an all mode 2 meter transceiver, a Kenwood TR-9000 and a 5/8 mag mount whip antenna and 100 feet of coax. I had a floppy disk based Tandy (Radio Shack) black and white laptop and some terminal software and was able to connect to a node in Budapest Hungary.
It's hard to believe all of this happened 19 years ago now.
2 comments:
Cool. 1990 I was promoted Captain in May, and flying a desk here in Ottawa. No travel to faraway lands for me.
I get to chat to OK land a lot now though. Some fluke of propagation lands my signal there and there signals here more often than any other country than the USA I think.
It was a great time to be over there. The wall had come down between East and West Germany. The Soviet army was slowly headed east back to the USSR - long columns of vehicles, and tanks filled the roads to the east of Kosice and over the frontier to Ukraine. I've been back a couple of times since those days but it's not the same.
I seem to be working many Slovak and Czech stations too - they put out some amazing signals. Worked D44TXF last week on Cape Verde. Some good stuff on despite the lack of spots.
Post a Comment