My HAM Elmers

There are many people to write about but to make this history short I will mention only the most important…

Zbyszek and Gerard – two friends who had the idea to organize a HAM club in the school. Thanks to this idea I became a HAM. They were elmering many young scouts. Gerard got his license and callsign SP5UDH about the same time as I did. Zbyszek, after leaving secondary school, had a long break but then he returned to the hobby and his callsign is SP5YW.

Józek SP5MBQ. He was one of the few HAMs who lived in Sulejówek, the city where I was growing up. He always had time for the club station and he was showing us the first QSOs.

Bogdan SP5HGR. Another of few HAMs from Sulejówek. He has great knowledge in physics and really great patience to explain simple or complicated rules of physics and electronics to young people. Extremely calm character.

Karol SP5YQ. I met him during a scouts radio camp, where he operated special event station SP0ZHP. It was in 1985. Great CW operator. In big part it is thanks to him that I started to learn CW for real. Observing his manner of working on CW was the best CW school and the best motivation for my own learning. After 1985 I had a chance to vist Karol’s QTH many times – I was delivering his QSL cards and it was always a chance to talk about HAM radio.

Marek SP5HEJ. I met him during a scouts radio camp, where he operated special event station SP0ZHP. Marek was very good at electronics and he worked in a company which was repairing radio equipment of emergency medical services. He also had very nice station, dedicated especially to 2m, 70cm and satellites. Marek always had time for other HAMs. He helped many HAMs from Warsaw area repairing their transceivers. He was also technically maintaining 2m repeaters.

Tom SP5CCC. I met him during the same scouts radio camp as SP5YQ and SP5HEJ. Meeting him showed me the HAM radio as a kind of service. Tom paid a lot of his HAM radio time to organizational aspects of HAM Radio. His great passion is the history of HAM radio, especially in Poland.

Chris SP7GIQ (SN7Q). Well, I met Chris when I was a HAM for many years and I already had some DX acheivements. In my club station we loved contesting but for many year we were not in touch with the Polish contest community. In fact the station of Chris SP7GIQ was the first real contest station I saw and his dedication to contesting was and still is a model of a contestman.

There are more callsigns in my mind but I feel that poeple mentioned above are the most important.