AmateurRadio.com

I’m all prepared for the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend, starting Saturday. Today I paid another visit to the Baishajia lighthouse and they will give me the VIP pass this weekend. I’m allowed to use the employee-entrance so I can come early and leave late, and I can go up the tower to string longwires. Electricity is free, too! (With the electricity bill they have over there I guess my use of a couple of Ah won’t make much difference).

This year the Taiwanese entry to the ILLW is three strong. Apart from me being at BaiShaJia on both Saturday and Sunday, BV1EJ will use a special call sign BV0LH from the SanDiaoJiao lighthouse, on Saturday. SanDiaoJiao is where the Spanish first discovered Taiwan and its English name is Santiago or San Diego Lighthouse. It is the most eastern tip of Taiwan. On Sunday BM2LDT and BX2AI will be at FuGuiJiao Lighthouse, which is the most northern lighthouse in Taiwan. Not bad and I hope a bit of promotion will result in even more lighthouses being activated in 2015. Have fun and keep an eye on the clusters to see where we can be reached. I’ll be active as BX2ABT/LH from 0100 till 0930 UTC on both Saturday and Sunday.

It’s not often that I meet hams whom I only met on air. So today I was delighted to put a face to the call HL5KY, Joe from Korea.

HL5BTF, HL5KY and BX2ABT

The pride and joy in my shack is a Weller WECP-COD3 soldering iron. It is the only professional piece of equipment I have.

Weller soldering iron

So now I wonder: how old is the soldering iron in your shack? Do you go for quality or buy low price and throw it out after a while? Leave a comment if you please. It will surely be fun to read.

SICK
After coming back from a tour of eastern Taiwan my leg felt very strange, I started to have a fever and began to vomit. In the hospital they diagnosed it as cellulitis and they kept me on an IV-drip for a week. Back home now and feeling a bit better, but I still need a lots of rest and take quite some meds to make sure it doesn’t resurface again.

OLD FRIEND
On our trip to eastern Taiwan I visited BX8AAD – Gene – in Taitung. I hadn’t seen him in over 17 years, so it was a happy reunion. Back in the 90s we were both avid shortwave DXers, now we’re both hams. Funny how things turned out the same for both of us.

DXCC
Opening my post office box I found 30 QSL cards, which brings my total confirmed DXCC entities to 100. Not that I want to apply for a certificate, because I don’t need another piece of wallpaper; but it is nice to know that I have reached this milestone.

OSTRICH
Now for some sad news. The curious, radial loving ostrich is no longer. He died of unknown causes, but most probably due to something that shouldn’t have been eaten by him. Despite him messing up my gear I did like the big bird and he will be missed.

ILLW
And lastly, on August 16 and 17 I will activate the Baishajia lighthouse here in Taoyuan for the International Lighthouse and Lightship weekend. This is the first time I will do something like this, so it will be fun to see how it works out. I just hope the sun cooperates and sparkles us with some spots.

That concludes the news brief for today. I hope to be back soon with more adventurous adventures. 73

Not much special going on lately. Worked some SKCC members, spent some time on 6 meters and worked my first station over 3000 km there. My weather station always seems to be in need of repair and my website’s CMS needed upgrading. Oh yes, there is the daytime job, too. Busy, busy, busy.

But, my wife was so nice to bring me a 2.6 meter telescopic whip from one of her trips to China. And so, last Saturday afternoon, while my little girl was horseback riding, I took the KX3 and MP1 with the new whip for a spin. The longer whip proved okay, although now the loading coil is much too large. Without the coil the whip needs to be shortened to be resonant on 12 meters and lower. I made four QSOs: HL0HQ (the KARL HQ station), JD1BLY (from Ogasawara), 7M2ALZ and JL1NMB. The resident ostrich took interest in my setup and decided the counterpoise set was a nice toy to play with and so he took it from me. Who said QRP is not dangerous? Power levels may be low, but those beaks do have a lot of force in them.

A curious ostrich interested in my counterpoise set.

Never say that protesting doesn’t help. After Agentschap Telecom withdrew the registration of my Dutch call sign – and some 200 other Dutch hams living abroad – the two biggest Dutch amateur radio organisations wrote a letter to the AT in protest. Not only that, but many of the affected hams also wrote in to appeal the decision. The reasoning of the AT for their action was quite valid, because every database needs to be cleaned up every now and then. Their execution wasn’t and yesterday they admitted to that.

All the affected hams will be re-registered, with their old call signs given back to them. All previously issued registration papers will remain valid. We are being asked by AT to cancel our registration voluntarily in case we indeed never use the Dutch radio space. Re-registration is always possible, because the results of the test to pass the radio amateur exam will stay on record.

All’s well that ends well. 73 from PA2BX a.k.a. BX2ABT

Agentschap Telecom – which is the Dutch version of the FCC – has decided to cancel the registration of my Dutch call sign PA2BX. And besides me also the calls of some 197 other Dutch radio amateurs who live abroad. Their reason being that since we don’t live in the Netherlands anymore we also don’t use the radio spectrum for which we need to be registered.

They already did so on March 12th, sent out letters to the operators involved on March 14 and then on March 19 informed the VERON, the Dutch Amateur Radio Society member of the IARU, that they were intending to do so. I don’t think I have to explain that I am very disgruntled with all this, and no doubt with me many others. At first sight it seems the AT doesn’t have any legal grounds to take this action and all is not lost, because I can always register again. But for now I cannot claim that I hold the call PA2BX and I cannot operate either in the Netherlands or with a guest licence in many other countries. These civil servants sure know how to waste time and money thinking of silly things like teasing us amateur radio operators.