Sunday, June 18, 2006

Ham

When I was a kid growing around Hyderabad I saw this standard issue blue background white font governement style board titled National Institute of Amateur Radio stuck inorganically around a fast developing community in Somajiguda. Since anything with the words"amateur", "dilettante" attract me like a moth to the flame, I checked them out to find out about this. But then there was paperwork involved with an examination to pass, etc. which took it off my list.

Now after 15 years, I am finally licensed by the FCC to operate on amateur radio bands with the call sign KI6EGH. All thanks to my co-worker called Mike Myers (Yeah! He shares the same quality of making you laugh and think at the same time) who introduced me to this hobby and getting me my first transceiver. Did you know that Rajiv Gandhi met Sonia over ham radio (as a precursor to this modern day chatting). ? I forgot their call signs.

One of the first internet chat services was called ICQ with "CQ" being radio code for calling anyone over RF.Any of you hams reading this can reach me over the 2 meter band (usually around the 144.93 MHz range).

So this converts my official status of pig to a ham :)

2 comments:

sd said...

Hi. First time here. Your post on yugs and all those time sclaes was neat!!

Paddy said...

[SD] Welcome and I am happy to see a new soul reading my writeups. Thank You.