Sergeant Malik Pugh recently won the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal for stepping forward and 3D printing a part that was needed to put a satellite terminal back in operation. That's was great, but even more interesting for us is the fact that Sergeant Pugh has a home electronics workshop in his place on family quarters on Okinawa. See picture above.
The workshop seems to be focused on RC cars, robots and drones, but there is clearly ham radio potential there. This may be the first time since David Cowhig WA1LBP's tour on the island in the early 1990s that we see a workshop like this one. David was 7J6CBQ and, in addition to his duties at the American Consulate at Naha, Okinawa, served as 73 Magazine's "Hambassdor" (I was the Hambassador to the Dominican Republic at the same time).
Read about Sergeant Pugh here:
Thank you, Okinawa was fun. I joined with a local ham club the Urasoe JARL group -- I went drove around Naha searching for their hidden transmitter every month -- and a picnic at the fox location and was often on their two meter repeater. I also visited the ham group at the US base Kadena several times.
ReplyDeleteJARL Okinawa webpage via Google Translate at https://www-jarl-com.translate.goog/okinawa/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
One of my Okinawa ham friends told me that like in the USA, the average age of hams is increasing and there isn't as much activity as before. The Yomiuri Shimbun, a big national Japanese newspaper on December 1st reported "2023: In Japan Ham Radio Makes a Comeback" translated on my translation blog at https://gaodawei.wordpress.com/2023/12/11/2023-in-japan-ham-radio-makes-a-comeback/
Oops, sorry Gao Dawei is Dave WA1LBP. Gao Dawei is my Chinese name -- I enjoy keeping up my Chinese online. When I was in Okinawa as 7J6CBQ I enjoyed talking to Chinese hams sometimes, also a few times from Malawi as 7J6CBQ.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to know more about ham radio in China, you may want to explore some Chinese ham blogs via machine translation programs such as Google Translate and the DeepL browser plugin.
For example, BD8MI's ham blog: https://www-qsl-net.translate.goog/bd8mi/?_x_tr_sl=zh-CN&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Some others:
BY2HIT: Harbin Institute of Technology Ham Radio Club at
https://www-qsl-net.translate.goog/by2hit/index1.html?_x_tr_sl=zh-CN&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
I reckon that Marine deserves an IBEW sticker, Bill. What do you think?
ReplyDelete73, Gareth - M5KVK