Life as a Single Farang in the jungle: Thai radio amateurs commemorate the death of their beloved king.
HS1A was the official call sign of His Majesty the King of Thailand. Like some other monarchs in the world, most notably Juan Carlos EA1FZ and King Houssein of Jordan JY1, the King of Thailand was an amateur radio broadcaster. The RAST, Radio Amateur Society of Thailand, was under his "patronage".
He was not only a radio amateur in particular, but was also "radio active" for several years on both the VHF and the HF bands.
Almost every day Lung Addie makes his rounds on the HF bands, only in the Morse (telegraphy) segments and usually with the antenna pointed towards Europe. From here it is 300-320° azimuth.
When I hear that there is propagation I make some connections as many radio amateurs can use Thailand ( HS or E2 ) in Morse mode in their collection of “worked countries”. This is due to the fact that amateur telegraph operators, active from Thailand, can be counted on one hand.
This afternoon my attention was drawn to the 15m band, 21.022 MHz, by a relatively weak signal with an unusual call sign… HS70A … certainly that suffix, that single A was special. A one letter suffix, and then another A, is not just given out in amateur radio circles. HS, there is no doubt about that, that means Thailand, 70 is guaranteed to be a “special event station”…. and then that A at the end … more than enough reason to listen to this more closely. And yes, it was from Bangkok, the special event: commemoration of the King, who, as we telegraphers call, was “SK”. SK means Silent Key = deceased.
Now to add more because Lung addie definitely wanted this station in the log… antenna towards North and, despite the fact that the frequency is too high for such a relatively “short distance” , I know, from experience, that my ground wave is far extends enough to be able to “write” me in Bangkok, 550km from here. The received signal was now strong enough and since I know the station from which the broadcasts took place, HS1AC, the club station in Bangkok, regarding power and antennas, it should certainly work with my "modest" means. For connoisseurs: RST was 579 with slight QSB (fading). Here we go: HS70A de HS0ZJF, HS0ZJF K. Wait a minute and ….. yep BINGO …. HS0ZJF de HS70A cfm ur RST 599 599 FB … HS70A ur RST 579 579 sum QSB QTH Chumphon… tnx 73 es gl.
Gringo, Ronny, Herald and some other, still rare telegraphers on the blog here, will understand this language and also know the excitement of a radio operator when he hears signals from, for example, the home country. If he heard cq the OST or cq the PCH …. always a special feeling that only a radio operator telegrapher knows, and is still valid even in these times of modern communication.
…. … .—- .- .-. .. .–.
The saying “if every other modern form of communication fails, ask an amateur radio operator, he never fails!
Thanks to E21EIC, Champ, the HS1AC operator on duty.
73 de XUAIA.
Correction: it should be XU7AIA
Am also in possession of a Cambodian license: XU7AFU and was active from Cambodia for several years with this call while waiting for my Thai license.
73 … lung addie
73, the PE1HLL
My NL call sign is PD0AJW
Dear Lung Addie, I passed on a message earlier last Friday, but I read on the blog under contact that they do not forward messages, I had a question about the immigration office in Chumphon and whether you have experience with that in Chumphon province lives, my email address is [email protected] and tel.nr Dtac +66-99-315-6848.
If you are not available for information, please let me know by email, thanks in advance, best regards, Michael
Does Lung Addie have a Thai broadcasting license? According to my father-in-law HS1KWG, they are not easy to obtain in Thailand, and there are heavy penalties for illegal channels.
Dear Henry,
YES, Lung addie has had a Thai broadcasting license for 6 years: HS0ZJF. Not only an operator license but also your own station license. There are severe penalties for violating Thailand's radio laws or possessing illegal transceiver equipment. Not worth the risk.
It took 6 years to obtain the permits, for the German radio amateurs even 12 years and for the French 8 years… I have posted 3 articles here on the blog about how to obtain a broadcasting permit in Thailand…. just use the search option on this blog and you will be able to read the full procedure.
Then it is a lot easier in Cambodia, isn't it? I still have the impression that the rules here in Cambodia are generally a lot more flexible than in Thailand and they are also applied more flexibly. In the Netherlands I have a Novice License with restrictions on HF, here I got a Full License for the entire HF area without any problem.
In Cambodia it is a piece of cake to obtain a broadcasting license. 50USD, a copy of your passport, a copy of your original license, the characteristics of your devices and antennas, the installation location and you're done. In Thailand it is a lot more difficult. Currently even impossible for Dutch radio amateurs. A “reciprocal agreement” must first be concluded and that is quite a job. Currently only about 10 countries have such an agreement. You must also present a HAREC class A (Full license) in Thailand, a novice license is not accepted. All this is due to the fact that the Thai amateur radio license is NOT accepted by the CEPT because of the low level of the exams to be taken. So they don't just accept foreign licenses either. As I wrote: the procedure took 6 years!!!
@Lung Addie, I was indeed a professional telegrapher in my navy days and you are "just" an amateur radio operator! How treacherous the use of words can be, because in my opinion most telegraphers are amateurs compared to radio amateurs, who deal with radio technology professionally.
I could record and send messages, but had the greatest difficulty tuning channels to the maximum. Others were good at that.
The feeling you describe at the end of making and receiving contact is indeed wonderful. I cite some examples:
• On Curacao we had a 24-hour connection with the Netherlands, but due to atmospheric disturbances that connection was often interrupted, especially at night. Now you could make contact on multiple wavelengths and if it worked and you could tell your colleagues the next morning that all messages had been received and sent, you were as proud as a monkey!
• On the way from Curacao to Key West we would have a rendezvous with an American naval vessel. I had to establish the radiotelephony connection. That didn't work, but we kept hearing a voice shouting something through the ether. That voice belonged, as it turned out a little later, to an American, who called our ship with a horrible accent, absolutely unintelligible. When we finally figured that out, the connection was good.
• Somewhere at sea, a death notice came in for a crew member. He wanted to make a phone call and we started working with PCH (Scheveningen Radio). Poor connection, but when the connection was finally established, it gave us as a connection team a lot of satisfaction.
You know that I regularly talk to Peter Pollack, who tells me about his hobby as a radio amateur and his participation in the regular contests. Very interesting, but for me also on a technical level, where I feel like a poor amateur.
Have fun with this wonderful hobby!
I never made it further than a heavily illegal 27MC 120 channel box with USB and LSB (apart from the later legal MARC boxes). But I had taught myself Morse code and with an open dipole in the attic (afraid of the RCD) I sometimes managed to reach Italy or Ireland with 10 Watts. Then shivers ran down your spine from excitement. If the connection became so bad that you could no longer understand each other, I still tried to pass on my mailbox number and so on by squeezing the microphone. If a QSO (or was it QSL?) card landed in your mailbox a few days later, you were in heaven.
Oh yes, only if there was no television, otherwise the neighbors would have no picture, even then quite a lot of rubbish was sold. 🙂
Dear French,
many of today's radio amateurs started the hobby that way. The radio amateur associations still fish in this pond of the CB people to recruit members. That is also the reason why the “novice” permits were introduced. To lower the entry barrier and also give non-technical specialists access to a slowly but surely disappearing technical hobby. This pond has now been fished out there, CB is almost dead because of the arrival of the internet.
The confirmation card calls a QSL. A connection via radio is a QSO.
The TV problem was not actually due to the poor quality of the CB sets offered. It was rather due to the fact that there was only TV reception via antenna. Those antennas had a “broadband amplifier” and received and amplified EVERYTHING, even if it was not intended for TV. When these amplifiers came on the market there were no CB's yet. So those cheap receiver amplifiers were not equipped with a bandpass filter…. the result can be guessed: malfunctions galore and the CB was blamed. But the real fault was not with them but with the composition of the cheap TV aerial amplifiers. Has ever been much quarreled about, both in the Netherlands and in Belgium.
90% of the failures were caused by those lamentable TV aerial amplifiers. There were even some that we had to take out of the air as they themselves produced such strong, unwanted emissions that they interfered with the aviation bands!
The other 10% had a different cause: not properly shielded antenna cables, LF detection, fiddling with the original devices,: boosting power by self-proclaimed specialists who didn't know what they were actually doing. Pre-amplified mics that then caused “splashes” that were a pleasure to hear….
Yes, as a radio amateur you always had something to do at that time …. especially if you were doing it professionally….
It has always fascinated me and still does.
Dear Lung Addie,
Have read with great interest your article about radio broadcasting amateurs here in Thailand and especially about the recently deceased King of this country. Especially the news that this beloved king was also a radio amateur.
However, what really peaked my interest is to hear that the Morse code is still in use by radio amateurs.
I am (was) myself, not an amateur, but a professional telegraph operator (radio operator) from 1959 to 1981. The first 4 years in the service of Radio Holland and hired out on ships of the Dutch merchant navy. From 1963 to 1981 in the service of the Danish AP Moeller shipping company (Maerskline), mostly on ships in the Far East. As we often called at the ports in Thailand, I settled in Bangkok in 1973 where I lived until 1992. In 1981 I left the Danish merchant navy and started working as a radio dispatcher on oil rigs in Southeast Asia until 1986 and then came to work on the wal in Thailand until I retired in 2006. Moved from Bangkok to Songkhla in 1992 where I lived until 2011 and moved again from Songkhla to Mukdahan where I live now.
But for a while I have been following your nice stories here on this blog and had no idea that you were a radio broadcasting amateur. Also maybe a professional telegraph operator in your younger years??
In any case, nice to meet you this way. Hope there will be more articles on the Thailandblog. Always very interesting and you are a good writer.
Best regards and 73,
Vincent
Yes, dear Vincent, Morse is still very much used by radio amateurs. After all, it is the surest form for making a difficult connection. Even deep in the noise, if you can't understand anything in phone, Morse code still works. As long as the distinction between a dot and a line can be made, the conversation can continue. Morse code has been banned from commercial shipping. There aren't even any radio officers on board anymore. All communication is via SATCOM. The 500 kHz is also a thing of the past, although it is still monitored by some coastal stations. Knowledge of Morse is no longer a MUST for radio amateurs in some countries to obtain a full license. Shame ? Those who want to can still take the Morse test.
Personally I like morse, never work in phone. Am almost 40 years radio amateur and don't have a single phone qso in the log and I have a lot of them: there are almost 100.000 with 332 different countries confirmed. Gave years of technical training to future radio amateurs in Belgium. The very good VERON handbook served as basic course. The Dutch really did a great job with this, credit where credit is due. The technology behind radio, that is what a radio amateur is really interested in. He has to take so many things into account: the 11-year solar cycle, the time of day, sunrise, sunset ... cool educational hobby that you can practice whenever you feel like it, after all, you mainly do it from home.
PS have never been a professional telegrapher, but as described elsewhere, always worked in "radio", in all its facets and always enjoyed it.
Pete is known to me. Sat with more than once in Sihanouckville. A good telegraph operator XU7XXX. A man of the “top band”, ie low frequencies: 1.8 MHz, 3.5MHz, 7 MHz ... fervent contester and also a very good technician. It was always great to sit with him, with Wim, XU7TZG…. a get-together: XU7XXX, XU7TZG and XU7AFU … yes, then only radio was discussed. It is a pity that he is no longer “radio active” at the moment. But don't worry Gringo, he also plays pool well ha ha ha.
Manually adjusting an "output stage" ... yes, it is an art ... now there are many who simply can't do that anymore because the modern devices have ATU (automatic antenna tuning). Press the button and it's fixed in a few seconds…. The Pi filter, with its famous “Plate and Load” tuning…. Yes Yes …. only the old generation of radio operators still know this. My PA still works on tubes (up to 2KW) and still needs to be tuned manually. Since all my antennas (homemade) are "resonant", this is a breeze. In the Navy this was different, the antennas on the ships were limited in supply and were “multiband antennas” that were not resonant but always had to be tuned: an ART !!
The word "amateur" does not cover the load. Most of the radio amateurs can be found in the professional communications sector or have something to do with it. They were ex-Navy Radio Officers or had something to do with this in some way, eg as a radio-TV technician or electro-technical engineer. . Formerly called the "men with the plastron".
Personally, my entire active career has been dominated by radio communication. I was at the CCRM, comparable to the NERA in the Netherlands, Senior Radio Operator – Field Engineer. Responsible for everything concerning beacons, both Maritime and Aeronautical. As well as for the correct functioning of the automatic landing systems, keeping the naval and aviation frequencies free of interference…. Knowledge of Morse code was a MUST as all identification of the beacons is still done in Morse code, even in these modern times.
Radio is a "microbe" and once infected it is lifelong.
correction … Pete had callsign XU7ACY an not XU7XXX … my apologies because I don't think Pete would be slow to be associated with that XU7XXX ….