#myusername | Why I am named "ONEALFA"
This is a modified , enriched version of my initial post here on steemit, published more than two years ago. How many of those, who have seen this before, are yet active here on steemit? A dozen ? Or five? Or 1-2 ?
Today I read a bunch of replying posts (@laputis, @drugelis, @organduo) to recent challenge #myusername of @contrabourdon [ here is that post ], and decided that maybe I should go for this, and post an updated version of my rather old post.
Why I named myself ONEALFA ?
The nickname @onealfa maybe meaningless for most people. While some may think, that this is something ambitious, related to 1A... like listed first… or premium… or first class…. or god knows what else, just written with a small error, where “alfa” shall be “alpha”. Reality is different, much different, and is extremely simple.
I have a hobby, called “amateur radio” ( or often called HAM radio), and in that game a precise, unique call signs must be used. Which are defining, what country you are located, (in some cases – even in which region of that country), and are the only such in THE whole world. Because this hobby is global, and truly border-less. ( just like crypto's) Those callsigns are permanent, licensed to a particular person. And can not ever be used by other person ( at least in a significantly long time frame, usually 50-100 years)
So, my personal Ham radio callsign is
LY1A
While broadcasting, transmitting ham radio callsign to other hobbyist by a radio waves, and by voice, usually the easy recognizable audio spelling is used. And my call LY1A is usually spelled as
“Lima—Yankee—One—Alpha”
I just took the second half, and used it as my nick name. To simplify things, and look and sound more natural in my own language, and changed Alpha to Alfa.
LY is the prefix of the call, and it is indicating my country, Lithuania
So, this is a full disclosure of my nickname secret. It is simple, short, unique, ease recognizable, reliable, permanent. I use it almost in every other place while online, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Slack, YouTube, Google+, Vimeo, KeyBase, Producthunt, Flickr, Foursquare, Disqus, Medium , Etsy, Myspace, Photobucket, Imgur, Flipboard, KiK, Telegram, Discord, etc etc
Ask Google, they will prove :)
As all my colleagues "hams" share the same prefix "LY", we often call each other (in the real life) by the second part of the call. Some of my old time friends, and well known persons in HAM world are FIVE-Alfa (LY5A), Seven-Zebra (LY7Z), Nine-Yankey (LY9Y), Two-Wiskey (LY2W).
Just enter their call in the google, set for "pictures" , and you can easily find each of them, with photos of the man and his radios, and of course - their ANTENNAS
Because the radio communications can be ONLY AS GOOD AS GOOD ARE YOUR ANTENNAS.
Nothing is more important than antennas in this great hobby.
The interesting thing is - that this is kind of social network, which existed LONG before Facebook, before Twitter, Before Instagram or YouTube, and yes, sure - before STEEMIT.
Long before the INTERNET itself.
I am pretty sure that I'm the longest (or at least one of the longest) participants of social networking here on Steemit.
I'm in live (!) social networking since 1971, and for good period, maybe 25+ years been doing it like crazy, day after day, non-stop, 360+ days in a year. For 25 years !
Have established a personal two-way radio contacts with EVERY SINGLE country in the world, on all continents including Antarctica, and many many small and tiny, uninhabited islands in all five oceans of this planet. Have made contacts with astronauts in Earth-orbit, contacts with both Americas, Africa and Japan by bouncing signals back from the Moon, having this Earth satellite act as a passive signal reflector
(BITCOIN to the MOON ?!)
I know the taste of winning #1 place in the whole world, in contests, and a taste of holding world records.
Well.. but this was quite some time ago. When I was young and more crazy than I am know. :)
And here are a few of my QSL’s:
What is a QSL? That is like a paper document, confirming an established two-way radio contact
But this subj is a long talk, long enough for another post. Maybe one day. Stay tuned... :)
Or ask google - it will show more QSL related to me
@onealfa
LY1A (also USA extra class licence holder as AB4UW)
P.S.
If somebody wants to learn more about HAMS, a good source to start is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio
Welcome to Steem @onealfa.
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Hi and welcome here! When I started on steemit, my biggest problem was to find interesting people to interact with. So, to help newcomers getting started I created a directory with other interesting and or talented steemians to follow or interact with. Feel free to check it out at https://www.steemiandir.com I am sure it will help you find like-minded people. Enjoy your stay here and do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!
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STOPWow nice to know meet colleague via your hobby I mean radio amateuring!
My call RZ3DBN
Hope to hear you in air!
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Hey there ! Not to many hams here on steemit, right ?
Last few years I spend much more time here on steemit than I do "on the air"
73
The same me. But I still try to spend time at my transceiver when it's possible! Here at Steemit I met only one more HAM bus as I know he stopped spend time on air coz there is strong QRM on bands at his town.
Posted using Partiko Android
Exactly same here - a terrible S9+20 man made white noise accross all bands from my home. Only solution - a remote country side house in a quite location and BIG antennas. Though to much time, money and dedication required for such.
Excuse for long answer. Yes I quiet understand you. Yes it's expensive and takes many time for such solution. But fortunately in my city I can set my antennas near my garden house and noise not so high only nearly S5-S7. Also I my ears can rest when I take my trx in travels. In some places it can be still lower than S2 it's really cool! And you can work call/p
Just tommorow starts my vacation and I hope take with me not only my VX 8dr but maybe Icom for HF bands if it'll be enough place in my package due that fact that with me will be my child. Maybe I'll work only at Uhf vhf.
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Hi, @onealfa!
You just got a 73.12% upvote from SteemPlus!
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You asked for Some adrenaline ... there for we have to go to the best roller coaster in Europe and meet half way, me from Holland you from lithuania , that would be EUROPAPARK so i Will
Meet you there....
Britt 😉
Thanks for sharing! Perhaps you can nominate some others too?
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Thanks a lot for your resteem, @contrabourdon
What a story. You have truly very interesting life. Thank you for sharing it with us
I can share a lot. If only I could find who listens :)
I think on the Steem community one can always attentive audience:)
I’m KE0RQE (just the generic assigned call sign) and hail from the western mountains in the US. But I don’t DX - who has time when there’s so much to read on steem? :)
I have to agree. Internet offers so many interesting things today. Not even comparable to the last century's seventies, when for us here, living behind the "iron curtain" (ussr) the only source of fresh air was radio. Radio Luxembourg - for music. Radio Free Europe , WOA & Swoboda - for world news. Ham Radio - for talks with free people.
73
I understand well. One of my daughter-in-law's father escaped from communist Czechoslovakia around 1980 and made it to the US a year later. My maternal grandfather was born in the Czech Republic in 1906. I recently worked with a couple of guys whose parents came from Latvia - one of Latvian decent, the other Russian. Luckily, they were friends having not lived through it themselves. For a short time, I dated a woman from Kiev. It is unfortunate that the world has such harsh history, yet encouraging that we can somehow get through it...
I had a thought - with all of the new tribes popping up, maybe someone needs to create a HAM tribe for sharing tips and tricks and DXing accomplishments (such as yours!). A bit beyond my skills, but I’d be a supporter :)
You know, I was thinking about this a lot. In fact all my time here on steemit (and I've been here for a while, I'm one of those early adopter's) , I was constantly looking for hams. Have noticed only a few, and even those who are, often are hiding this fact, seem to be not sharing this much . Sometimes I recognize one being a ham ONLY from his secondary comments, some typical things mentioned, etc. I don't know why is this. But... seems to me creating HAM's tribe can be a very very difficult task .
Maybe creating HAM's tribe would be a difficult task because hams are used to one on one communication as opposed to one to many. They seem to be more individualists than social people. Kind of like organists. Or am I missing something?
interesting to know about that never knew that before
Thanks for your story! I've noticed you on Instagram and Twitter as well. I've only marginally heard about people communicating in amateur radio frequencies. Seems like a very geeky subject. Maybe even fit for #stem tag here. You must be the most senior person holding lots of SP from our country! How any of your friends react when you mention blockchain, crypto, Bitcoin and Steem?
Congratulations @onealfa!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
My older brother did his senior project back when he was graduating high school in 2000 on Ham radio and I should probably learn it too. Welcome to Steemit. Oh, I wonder if Ham radio could possibly transmit the Internet, files, and not only audio.
That’s super cool. You are truly an OG. Interesting point about ham radio enthusiasts being the first truly global social network!
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HAM radios on Steemit, I've seen it all now!
I've always been curios to learn more about HAMS and will certainly check it out. My uncle had one when I was a kid, and I found it fascinating. I always thought he was a spy or something. Check out my blog if you have time for a short read. Thanks!