[BARC-List] BARC Question of the Week

[G. John Garrett, CAS]

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In the early 90s I took a borrowed HW8, my straight key and some magnet wire to
Botswana. Contacts were about as you'd expect from a dipole in the short trees. 
As far as I know I still hold A22JG as an active callsign. The rig 
came in handy as I called in a medical emergency from the Kalihari desert, on 
the Tropic of Capricorn.  Later that year I took my Yaesu HF rig, more wire and
a 1/4 wave 20M vertical to the Soviet Union. I was one of the first westerners
licenced to operate in Moscow [from my hotel room too!] as UA3A/WN9T. The 
Moscow Radio Club loaned me a nice, unregulated power supply, so I chirped just
like the locals! The maids freaked out on seeing the antenna and I had to 
retreive it from the building engineer after assuring him the radiators would 
be a sufficient ground. A few weeks later I was the first westerner to operate
from Turkministan as UH8E/WN9t, in the southern triangle just a few miles from
the Afghan and Iranian borders. I charged my battery from a nearby truck and 
would work a dozen or more stations before breakfast every day. My QSL card was
me sitting on a wall from a 4000 year old city holding an ancient skull.

John
WN9T/W1BOS/A22JG/UA3A\WN9T/UH8E\WN9T

:-p

On 15 Nov 2004, at 11:15, k1nun at netscape.net wrote:

> To many of us, "operating portable" means bringing along your hand held VHF radio when you go somewhere. What does "operating portable" mean to you?

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