Bhutan (A52A) News

Over 6000 A52A cards have either been sent out in the mail or delivered in person at Dayton, within 10 days of going QRT!!!! By the end of this coming weekend, we should be caught up on QSLs! There are probably 2-3000 left to do. The four Johnson kids (NØMAJ, NØMJ, WØPRJ, & NØCMJ) have been processing about 1000 cards/day.

Note for Europeans: SO MANY Europeans worked A52A on SO MANY band modes that many QSL requests from Europe have NOT had enough for return postage for all of their cards! One U.S. dollar or one I.R.C. is NOT enough return postage to foreign countries for more than 3-4 band-mode confirmations. Bureau cards are accepted, but note that the WØ QSL bureau makes only 1-2 deliveries/year.

Ham Help Paid Off

Willem van Tuijl, the 13-year-old from the Netherlands wounded by gunfire during an attack by pirates off the coast of Honduras last March, has been released from a Dallas hospital. The Dallas Morning News reports Willem "did wheelies in his wheelchair to celebrate" as he left Our Children's House at Baylor University Medical Center on May 24. The son of Jacco and Jannie van Tuijl, KH2TD and KH2TE, Willem faces another two to three weeks of outpatient care. He is expected to be paralyzed from the waist down as a result of his injuries. After the pirate attack, the family was aided by Amateur Radio operators who called the Coast Guard and provided medical advice during the family's trip to shore. With the help of a friend, Jacco van Tuijl recently sailed his boat from where it had been moored in Honduras to a slip in Southern Florida. While there, van Tuijl spent a few days with Ed Petzolt, K1LNC, one of the hams who had aided him on the air after the pirate attack. ARRL President Jim Haynie, W5JBP, was instrumental in getting Willem and his parents transported to Dallas, where the youth could get specialized medical care.

David Sumner K1ZZ

ARRL Executive Vice President David Sumner, K1ZZ, flew in from Istanbul, Turkey, just to attend the League's National Convention. Sumner has been on the International Amateur Radio Union team representing Amateur Radio interests at the World Radiocommunication Conference 2000.

During his "Vision for Amateur Radio's Future" on Saturday, Sumner noted that Amateur Radio's demographic peaks in the late 40s or early 50s. "This is the 'baby boom' moving through the system," he said. "The point of entry for Amateur Radio today is not principally teenage, as it perhaps was 30 or 35 years ago." Sumner said today's technology has opened Amateur Radio's once "unique window on the world" to many outside the hobby, especially those on the Internet. That trend will continue, he predicted, as telecommunication costs drop. In the future, the population that got into ham radio as a cheap personal communication service will no longer be attracted to the hobby, he said. "The effect of that is that the licensing

He predicted a precipitous drop in the number of Amateur Radio licensees in the US starting in 2001, when many licenses of those who had entered the hobby a decade earlier as a part of the initial flurry of code-free Technicians expire. But he doesn't see that as a major negative for ham radio--just indicative of a shift in focus of the participants.

Sumner said he's seen a higher regard for disaster communications capabilities of Amateur radio at WRC-2000 than he'd seen at other recent conferences. "A low-technology solution to disaster communications is not a bad thing, it's s a good thing," he said. "All you need is two hams and it will work." Sumner said if a proposed "harmonized" worldwide allocation at 7 MHz ever is approved at a future World Radiocommunication Conference, it will not be because of DXing or contesting but because of disaster communications capability.

Sumner said Amateur Radio will continue to have a role in scientific investigations. And he said personal achievement and accomplishment will continue to provide an incentive to be a part of Amateur Radio in the future. "Lest we forget," he said, "it's supposed to be fun."

Hams to the rescue again

Ham radio helps rescue Pacific boaters: According to a May 14 report in The Honolulu Advertiser, ham radio operators in Hawaii and on Fanning Island in the Republic of Kiribati worked together to help the US Coast Guard rescue a group of teachers adrift in the Pacific. Five Fanning Island teachers were aboard a 36-foot outrigger canoe on a day-long fishing trip May 10 when the canoe's engine failed, said Lt Michael Wessel of the Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center in Hawaii. A relative reported the missing boat to a ham radio operator on Fanning Island who, in turn, reported it to a ham operator in Hawaii. The Hawaii operator reported the missing canoe to the Coast Guard. After coordinating with the US embassy in the Republic of Kiribati (to assure fuel would be available on Easter Island) the Coast Guard dispatched a C-130 from Oahu early May 12. The airplane found the boat at noon. The aircraft crew dropped food and water to the teachers, as well as a radio and beacon. They then contacted the coastal freighter Matangare on Washington Island in Kiribati. The freighter rescued the crew and salvaged the boat May 13.