Alberto
Silva (Argentina)
Born 26 February 1945
in Buenos Aires province. High School Technical Radio operator. LPD radio
operator from 1964 to 1968. Argentine Federal Police Telecommunication
officer from 1968 till 2002. International Criminal Police Organization,
Interpol, Member and Chairman of the Standing Committee on Information
Technology from 1987 to 2002. Retired as General Commissioner in 2002.
Amateur Radio LU1DZ/AY1DZ since 1962
The Whale of the Caribbean
Sea
Many years ago I started
my radio job at LPD, the old coastal radio station at Buenos Aires,
after having been educated in the Technical High School where I have studied
everything about Morse, radio techniques, propagation, weather, geography,
electronics, etc.
As a new and young radio
operator, the supervisor told me to transmit telegrams, using RTTY. (Telex
over radio) The CW room, however, remained just a dream for some time.
It wasn’t until 1965 when
the oldest man in charge in the CW room asked me to handle some traffic
on 22 MHz with distant ships. After having more experience in CW, I worked
on 16, 8 and 4 MHz, but 500 kHz was still off limits for me. That was only
for the best operators.
After a while I observed
a very funny CW communication in the telephony room. One of the SSB operators
heard a SOS call on 16 MHz. It was a very clear CW transmission coming
from "Buque Motor Ballenita", a ship under Panamanian flag, well known
by LPD.
He started the usual emergency
procedures and everybody came close to him to follow the news about our
friends in difficulty. The Ship CW message said, "We have problems with
a whale".
"My Lord, they have a collision
with a whale...!!!", we said
"We are in the Caribbean
Sea …"
Bastian van Es (The Netherlands)
"Fish sticks" is in my opinion
the best kind of fish, i.e. I mean to eat. The nicest thing is, it does
not taste like fish and it does not resemble fish either. Sorry, but I
did not grow up in a fishy surrounding. When I was a child we never had
fish on the table, besides a small white fish that my father caught by
accident in the canal behind our house that my mother fried in butter.
When I sailed as radio officer
on a Norwegian ship, I was buried in fish. From morning to late in the
evening there was fish on the table; dried, fried, stewed, pickled, boiled,
etc.
I got sick of it and still
do when I think of it. I also prefer not to talk about it.
It was in the beginning
of the 1950’s and we had hoped to celebrate Christmas in Havana. After
departing
Kingston, where we had unloaded general cargo, we were
asked to head for a small harbor on the south coast of Cuba for loading
iron ore. I had never known that Cuba had iron ore mines and neither did
the captain, because he looked weird while reading the telegram. But …
there it was, and so it must be true.
That little harbor was not
a harbor at all, merely an anchorage some hundred meters from the coast
line. The coast seemed to be a paradise, snow-white beaches, softly waving
palm trees, and with all this a temperature of about 30° C.
The iron ore mines seemed
to be somewhere in the neighborhood, because after a couple of hours some
lighters with rust brown earth in bulk approached. The dockworkers, who
had to get that stuff into the holds, arrived on smaller boats.
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Was it you Sparks that had
the nerve
to complain about the freshness of
the fish? |
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Peter
Volk (Germany)
born 1931 in Bunzlau,
Schlesien, mature 1949 in Leipzig. Afterwards apprenticeship as electrician
in a mine south of Leipzig for two and a half years.
Study of twelve month
as radio operator with radio certificate for fishing vessels at the Navigations
School Wustrow, Fischland. Two years aboard as radio operator on trawlers
of Fishing Company at Rostock. In the years 1955/56 study as radio engineer
with radio certificate 2nd Class and afterwards as radio officer aboard
of merchant vessels of "Deutsche Seereederei Rostock" (DSR) in Mediterranean
and in Far East region. Since 1959 radio certificate 1st Class and one
year as radio staff of a passenger ship. From 1961 to 1974 as radio inspector
and afterwards as Specialist for radio and radio-navigation in the technical
department of DSR.
Since 1990 retired. Hobbies:
bonsai and garden, swimming and cycling. Since 1994 in board of radio club
"Seefunk-FX-Intern e.V. Rostock"
US-Jet/WJUGA approaching
Rügen Radi/DHS
Daddy frost, so named in
Russian areas, had Europe completely firmly in his grasp. According to
statistics, wintertime in 1962/63 was one of the coldest winters of the
last century. Even the greatest lake of Germany, the Bodensee in
southern Germany had for the first time frozen over, and naturally nearly
the entire Baltic Sea was frozen. Shipping was only possible with tugs
and/or ice breaker assistance. About 10 to 12 ships of our own Shipping
Company "Deutsche Seereederei Rostock," (DSR) and some foreign ships, were
firmly enclosed by the ice masses in the roads of Wismar and Rostock
ports . The cargos of these ships were needed urgently by the national
economy of the GDR. Our own tugs were not able to break that the approx.
40 cm thick ice in the harbour and the roads. All foreign icebreakers of
Baltic Sea countries were already contractually bound and unavailable.
The probability was that only our brother, the Soviet Union, could help.
With government help, after approx. 8 days we had in Rostock port
a Soviet icebreaker, which was loudly announced in the press, broadcast
and television.
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