Many of my fellow ham radio operators have interesting and sometimes mysterious backgrounds, especially those who were involved in government and military communications.
I met one such fellow at a ham convention in Colorado last year, where I had been invited as a keynote speaker, and we realized we were both originally from Cincinnati. As I learned more about Alan Higbie, it was clear he had a fascinating story to tell about his time in service on top of a hill of rubble in Germany during the Cold War and specifically the Prague Spring uprising of 1968. It was also a ham radio story and I promised Alan I’d find a way to memorialize it. Radio World was kind enough to publish the story and it’s online now.
If you think amateur radio is mere history, think again. With the power and the internet knocked out across a frigid swath of the United States, thousands of licensed ham operators are volunteering to provide communications for their communities hit by the big winter storm. Ironically this was the weekend hams across the United States had already been scheduled to practice their portable operating skills as part of Winter Field Day.
Some, including the radio clubs I’ve been involved with in Stafford, Virginia, canceled their participation in the exercise and were activated for duty at the county’s emergency operations center.
Meanwhile, The Geek Group founder, Chris Boden, is getting re-licensed and as part of that process the polymath whose foray into the cryptocurrency world landed him in prison, made history on Sunday. Welcome back, Chris.
I recently took and passed my Extra Class license online as well, but it was just a half dozen volunteer examiners peering at my screen and face to ensure I was not cheating and, unlike Chris’ experience, it wasn’t live-streamed!
Boden’s rehabilitation reminds me of another of our brethren whose social engineering skills earned himself a felony conviction — Kevin Mitnick. His quest to get his ham license back after he was paroled became a federal case of its own. Mitnick was considered by the government to be such a danger after he was released from prison he was initially not even allowed to look at the internet. After the former black hat put on a lighter shade of hacker headgear and won his battle with the FCC we met and I gifted him a VHF/UHF ‘handie-talkie,’ when I found out he didn’t own any ham gear, in the hope he would become active again on the airwaves around Los Angeles. Mitnick died of pancreatic cancer in 2023 at the age of 59.
Usually, amateur radio operators are regarded as helping to provide a public service, but the autocratic government of Belarus (neighbor and chum of Russia) has deemed them a national security risk and threatening to punish some of its licensed hams with the death penalty, claiming without evidence that the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR), a member of the International Amateur Radio Union, is a front for a ‘massive spy network.’
Unlike the Czechoslovak hams during the Prague Spring with whom Higbie made contact, there is absolutely no evidence the Belarus amateurs have been transmitting any sensitive information. It’s time for the global amateur radio community, human rights groups and governments around the world to publicize this injustice and appeal for their release.
73 de w7com.
Small world! I saw the Stafford Amateur Radio Association set up in Aquia Harbour a week or so ago!