It Has Been Quite a While

The past months have seen my attention taken by my first hobby, ham radio. The lure of its mystique has caught my attention and I have been immersed in it once again. Goaded on by friends, I was able to get my permits and some equipment so I am back on the air again with my "first love".

I am now known in ham circles by my call sign, DV1VHY. The call sign is broken down into the country designator, the letter D. The license class , which is V, the country region, Manila being 1. The last three letters are an arbitrary assignment chosen by the National Telecommunications Commission.

I communicate with some local hams via a number of ways. Within the metro, the VHF, or very high frequency, mode is used.

But for long haul communications, we use the HF, or high frequency, mode. Equipment consists of the radios themselves and their corresponding antenna.

The enjoyment dervied with this hobby is the ability to communicate long distances with the least amount of power you can have. Operating outsoors is always a challenge and a fun event.

So now, I am building my bridges with the local hams and also those who are members of my former radio club.

Back to Ham Radio

I believe I was able to acquire my amateur radio operator's license back in 1970. Being in the elctronics technical curiculum of my high school, we were given the opportunity to join the Don Bosco Amateur Radio Club. Our callsign was Delta Uniform One Delta Bravo Tango (DU1DBT). I was able to get the class A license. Upon graduation, I was volunteered by Fred Hashim, DU1EH, to the National HQ of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines as a radio operator. I met his friend Dr. Romeo Castaneda, DU1RC. These two expanded my knowledge of ham radio. Discussions were never very technical. I learned about a lot of things from these two gentlemen.

I joined the US Navy in 1976 an was away from the ham radio world up until 2008. 32 years of technical progress is quite hard to catch up with. I thank God that my technical rating in the Navy allowed me to keep up with quite a bit. So, on the 14th of May, I finally took the Class C examination and eventually passed the test. Even with the process of getting the license, much have change. When you get your operator's license, your call sign is also issued to you. So I was given the call sign DW1OLV. The DW1 means I am a Class C operator from the region 1 of the Philippines. The suffix OLV is a random set of letters. But this in total identifies Roberto Jose C. Vicencio as an amateur radio operator with the aforementioned station.

Technology is the backbone of ham radio and as such, it has set the pace in the advancement of the field of communication, next to military research. So it was not a very big surprise when I learned of Echolink and CQ100. The two being VOIP-based programs that gives ham operators the chance to "get on the air" via the PC-internet method. This is a boon to many since this gives the ham operator the opportunity to have QSOs (contacts) with other hams even if they do not have any ham radio gear. Many still operate the HF/VHF/UHF gear but the HF radio operators are sorely affected by the 11-year sunspot cycle. That is the reason why many operators, particularly seniors, are moving in the CQ100 program in order to maintain contact with other hams around the world.

So it is with this on my plate, that I return to the world of ham radio. I have been gone too long.

CQ CQ CQ DE DW1OLV CQ CQ CQ Delta Whiskey One Oscar Lima Victor calling CQ and standing by.