[The last renewal of this page: January 18, 1998]

Ham radio is a really big part of my life. It is obvious that ham radio has been a self defining experience for me and influenced me more. The following is a copy of a letter detailing my personal history with hamradio which I wrote to a friend of mine who doesn't know anything about ham radio.

A letter I sent to a friend, who doesn't know anything about Ham radio

Oct. 1996
My friend,

I remember when I was in 1st year of the junior high school, I started to develop an interest in the communications field. I started to exchange letters with an american girl who was the same age as me, as I had a strong interest in English. This was because I had been favourably impressed with an old american lady who I happened to meet in my home town when I was about 5 or 6 years old. When I greeted her by saying "He-llo!", she answerd "Hello!" with a big smile. I had to visit the teachers'room quite often to ask my English teacher for help with reading and writing English letters. I loved English so much, and I loved America so much, that I kept on listening to an English course on the radio for 3 years without missing one broadcast. By the time I graduated from junior high school, I could recite all the textbooks of the radio English course for the past 3 years, and also all the contents of 3 years of school textbook without looking at them.

When I entered seniorhigh school, I happened to hear a beautiful English conversation on the radio as I passed in front of the door of the Amateur Radio Club room. That was absolutely the most important turing that would determine the rest of my life. It was an inevitable fact rather than an accidental fact that I became deeply involved about this fantastic world of the communications as I had been interested in mechanism since I was little. I asked them to let me join the club as a member claiming without any feelings at guilt that I already had a hamradio operator's license. In the next moment, I was at the microphone despite the fact that I had no radio license at all. The first party that I ever communicated with over the radio in English in my life that day, was an american gentleman living on the Island of Guam. I really do not remenber at all what I actually talked about with him, but you might understand how excited I was.

It was then, that the period in which I devoted myself to the hamradio began. I eagerly took every available oppotunity to talk to american people over the radio from my home. Since I was only a seniorhigh school student, it was impossible for me to buy the radio equipment with the phone mode required for oversea contact, so I asked my Dad to give me an old TV set, and asked my Mom to give me a cookie can. I then built a receiver using electronic parts from the old TV set, using the cookie can as a case. Becoming excited with listening to the English conversations from that receiver, I also built a transmitter, but it could only handle simple Morse code transmissions as I could not buy the expensive special electronic parts which were nesesary for a "phone mode" transmitter. However, I was so happy and excited with being able to have conversations by sending and receiving English letters with american people. During those days, whenever I walked around the town, horns of automobiles used to sound like English letters, in Morse code. As I looked at neon signs and advertising in town, their Morse codes sounds used to ring in my ears.

After I entered university, I got a parttime job, and eventually I was able to buy a radio transmitter equipped with microphone which I could talk with others overseas. That was absolutely fantastic, and a dream came true for me. I began talking with american people over the radio for one or two hours everyday, asking about English grammar, their life style, their way of thinking. Everyday, was a storm of revelations blowing in my direction. Everytime I talked with american people, I used to ask them how my English was. They are so good at speaking well of other people, then they were always complementing me with comfortable replies like "You speak very good English. I wish I could speak Japanese as well as you speak English!". One day, I was chatting with Ray, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, at the very end of our conversation, I asked him about my English as usual, expecting to receive the usual reply, but to my surprise, instead of praising my English, he said " Your English has a very strong Japanese accent.". To make his point he chose the word "SIGNAL". It took about a half an hour of practice before he finaly proclaimed "There, you've got it right!" He was so kind and patient to do that for me. He then said if I wanted to continue English lessons, I should call up to the same frequency, at the same time the next day. This was how I "met him" at first time, and from that time became a very important influence in my life and continues to be a most generous benefactor to this day. Since the next day, we kept talking everyday, each time for as long as one to three hours for four years till I graduated from University. We talked about absolutely everything in the world. We also exchanged letters, photos and presents. Finally, it seemed we had been old friends for many years even though we had not met each other face to face.

Just before I graduated from University, I went on a trip to the United States for a month just because I wanted to meet Ray and his family. I stayed with them at their home for a whole week. One of my big projects in Alaska was to see the "aurora", which he talked about many times over the radio. Unfortunately the weather was not good enough to see it during my stay. Ray felt so sorry about that as he knew how much I wanted to see it. However on the last night, on the way to Anchorage airport in his car, he suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the road through the mountains and shouted "Aurora!" pointing high up in the sky with his hand. We got out of the car, standing in the snow in the freezing cold, where we could see a beautiful aurora decorating the night sky. That is a beautiful memory which I never will forget, and we both could not stop the tears of happiness welling up in our eyes as we finally could see the aurora together, and also tears of sadness because we had to part soon.

After leaving Anchorage, I traveled to a couple of states on the west coast, meeting many "hams" who I had talked with over the radio. I found out that the United States was just as I had been anticipating for many years since I was a child. What makes it so attractive is its great Nature, and the characteristics of its people, which are really big -hearted, as big as the Nature of their land.

I tried many things with Ray. As I had a part-time job as a truck driver, I thought it would be nice if we could get in touch with each other while I was driving a truck. Then I tried the challenge to the mobile communications with overseas stations using a shortwave radio, which is still uncommon in that era. As every electronic components were made with tubes instead of transistor or ICs in that era, the first step was to get a high voltage big electric power service in the truck. I put up little poles in every corner of the truck on which I strung a wire antenna for that purpose. I tried to insert many different kinds of coils into the wire to get the best resonance for a shortwave frequency. After numerous cuts and tries, I finally got a workable result. When I finally succeeded in getting his clear signal for the first time in the truck, I got so excited, I lost concentration on my driving and pushing the gas pedal fully to the floor, runnig at full speed, taking no notice of red traffic signals! Nowadays, no one would have serious problems establishing overseas communications from automobiles ,as there are well designed and well built radio equiment as well as antennas for that special purpose. However, in that era, it was something very much in the territory of pioneers.

A couple of years later, I encounterd personal comuters for the first time. That was absolutely a revolution in my history of involvement in communications. Electronic shops which sold personal computers were really rare even in Akihabara.( A town in Tokyo, well known as an area where hundreds of electronic shops are gathered, maybe the largest town in the world for this purpose.) Only dedicated computer enthusiasts used to own and work with them. I was immedicately fascinated with that attractive looking magic box. I started to learn the Basic language. For me, it was similar to learning English. Computer languages were tools for communicating, and once I mastered reading and writing them, I could get into a whole new world.

The first useful software which I wrote, was for a radio logbook. By having mastered the Basic language, my communications were streamlined. When I get a callback response from the stateside to a CQ call, I initiate that I have to do is to enter his call-sign, and I get the historical details of my radio contact with that call-sign deisplayed in front at me. Then when the conversation reverts to me, I can immediately say such things as " Hi Bob! It's been 15 months since our last contact. How is your 18 year old daughter?" I was very pleased to hear he was so surprised, and then he asked me " How can you have such good recollection?"

About ten years ago, "a packet radio" became common among the amateur radio stations. That is a kind of a computer-driven communication via the radio. I started to use that system almost immedeately, of course. Volunteer hams set up their personal computers as a host system just same as the Niftyserve (the Compuserve), and thereby many hams obtained access to the system to write and read messages over the radio.

One day I realized I was not get satisfied with just enjoying to access to the host system, and wanted to build and maintain my own host system for other people. So, I started to write the software for my own host system. It took me about a year before a day it was completed. My personal computer started to run 24 hours a day to run the system, and was so busy to handling lot of accesses from the all Kanto-area("Plain area" encompassing Tokyo and its environs) I have upgraded the system many times since then, and have opened it to the public as freeware. I finally mastered the C-Language and rewritten it in C, and it is still up loaded in the "FHAM" forum of the Niftyserve.

The new encounter with the host system enhanced my life again. A change to communications involving the general public and bulding a big databease of information, from the simple one to one comunication level enhanced my ability and future potential.

Seven or Eight years ago, there was a revolution in the world of the packet radio. That was the appearance of the "Packet Cluster Ssystem" the software for which had been written and built by a stateside ham. In the Packet Cluster (A new network system), people shakes hands with each other to make big chains across which they exchange information with each other or send message to all the people in "real-time", which was quite different from the way it used to be with the "One user access to the host computer system". Then, I imported the software from the U.S.. I remember that I was about the fifth person to import the system into Japan. I started to run a Node station, which is the host station from which links to other Node stations are made to form a "network chain". Hundreds of hams who were chasing contacts with the stations in rare overseas countries jumped into this system, accessing nearby Node stations to enable them to exchange real time information with their targets. We can now observe that nearly one hundred Node Stations exist in Japan forming a big network chain covering the whole ountry on a 24hours from Sapporo(North) to Miyazaki(South). I started to form a link to the Node Station in Korea using a shortwave radio for the first time in history. Thus, in the day we have good propagation conditions for the radio use, we can build up a big network throughout the Far East area.

Now, through this sort of progress, we are able to share information which used to be unattainable, and very differ from what we have in our area in the world as propagation conditions vary considerably from place to place at any one time. This changed the fact that only enthousiastic chasers could establish contacts with sations in rare countries. There is no doubt that technological progress has changed methods of communication, and the change of the communication system altered our values and our attitudes to life.

In the last couple of the years, a lot of experimentation of exchanging graphic data in color over the shortwave radio has been taking place( The slow sacan television ). I have also installed the system, and now I can send a fullcolor picture of my family in about 30 seconds to my friend in Spain, by saying something like "Well, now, I will send you a picture of my family. Standby one." This absolutely adds more depth and value to our conversations.

Overseas communications using amateur space satellite have also commenced. This form of communication is so reliable. Once the sattelite comes into our line of sight, we can comunicate with overseas stations in areas that the satellite can see from the space. We don't need a big radio system, and the variable propagation conditions do not affect trans- missions as in the shortwave radio. Once the satellite comes in, we can enjoy a reliable and stable communication everytime. It is obvious that this will take the leading role in radio communication development in near future. I mounted a system in my van(automobile), and can now enjoy conversations with U.S. and Europe direct from campsights, which is almost the first trials of this sort of communication in history.

Now, everybody is talking about the Internet everywhere, however I observe the "wide area networking" feature of the Internet had been already realized by the "Packet Cluster System" in very wide area, which is one of the special feature of the Internet seven or eight years ago. Multimedia functionality, the systematic merging of audio, graphics, and characters has already realized on hamradio well ahead of other sectors of the commercial world.

I believe that the richness of the life is found in the width and the depth of communication. And the history of my method of communicationing have developed in the following steps;

1. Correspondense. (Letters)
2. Radio in Morse code. (Code)
3. Radio in phones. (Voice)
4. Stand alone type P/C network on the radio. (Character data)
5. Wide area type P/C network on the radio. (Character data)
6. Radio in slow scan TV. (Graphic data)
7. Radio Mulitmedia via the Satellite. (Code, Voice, Characters, Graphic data)

What supported this development were, personally, enthusiasm for communicationing with people, and the appearance and development of personal computers.

I stand alert with a great deal of interest for the next development in this field. There is no doubt that the Internet will spread itself into all over the world, just like the newspaper before it. It seems that we have almost studied and overcome its technical problems by now. We will have more and more discussions and ideas for its practical use in good time. Maybe the next challenge will be in the area of satellite communications. I feel something fresh in that field in the ham radio. I sincerely hope I can maintain and update my knowledge and abilities in this field with a firm eye on the direction of technological flows and new concepts.

Sincerly Yours,

Koichiro Oka



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