In 23 years

There was a picture of James, 9V1YC, uploaded in face book a couple of days ago. He seemed to be home in New England right now and to have meeting with ham friends there. He has become a little bit less young than I expected him to be. No wonder, my image on him is till back in 1990 as this QSL shows.

I happened to be the QSL manager for XU8DX, which had been operated by Sokun, a personel of PTT in Phnom Penh Cambodia since the spring in 1989 when the Hungarian team left the radio set up over there. In the summer of 1990, the PA tubes of the amplifier were run out and were needed to be replaced to new ones. No way to send them to Phnom Penh, where the civil war was still going on.

I was on a tight duty at a hospital at that time and could never take a long vacation, even though later in the next year, I managed an 8 days vacation to Cambodia and operated XU0JA as well. I asked James and Atsushi, JF3NRI, to go there bringing those PA tubes. These two young guys readily ansered yes. It was how XU0AA operation came true in Dec of 1990.

They have done a great job. XU was not so popular those days that they have had great pile ups. Despite of military curfew at night and occasional power outage, they have made over 4000 QSOs in a week. Sometimes, there were strange outages when they went for disco, as I knew later.

Atsushi is still going on his profession as a physics researcher and is not able to be on the radio except for guest operation at some big contest stations. James, as everyone knows, has become a famous DXer as well as DX peditioner. He would go for FT/Z next winter. He seems to be quite successful at his job in 9V as well. Sokun is settled down in Australia and has a peaceful family over there after she has experiened the harsh era of Khmer Rouge.

23 years have passed.