Ram Muthukrishnan, VU2JXN, while growing up in India, had a difficult time finding any information about amateur radio in the libraries and magazines. It was not until Ram attended university that he met licensed amateur radio operators and could pursue the hobby. CW is Ram’s favorite operating mode, especially after attending CW Academy. He modified his SSB only BitX transceiver to operate CW and to use it for CW practice. As a software engineer by trade, Ram has a keen interest in software defined radio, SDR, homebrewing radios, and CW. VU2JXN is my QSO Today. Listen here: https://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/VU2JXN
Surprising that @VU2JXN did not come across radio amateurs being at Bangalore, the 'Ham Capital of India'! Bangalore is home for Indian Institute of Hams, AMSAT-India and ARSI, the only IARU affiliated amateur radio society in the country! Though I belong to a much smaller city, I could learn about Ham radio from a local newspaper article and I had a very old timer @VU2BY (SK), just a few km from home at that time. I still remember his demo of a 20 m QSO with a homebrew vacuum tube SSB radio which was the size of a small almirah! With a simple dipole over his home, hardly a few meters high, he contacted a station from Puerto Rico and I was wonder struck! That was in mid 1970s. I still remember the KP4 prefix, though I forgot the suffix of the callsign. In fact I was hearing the name Puerto Rico for the first time. But I had to wait a decade to become a Ham because of academic commitments which were my first priority. 73 de Jon, VU2JO.
Thanks for sharing your experience. With the Internet, it is much easier to find the hams and clubs near us.
I had an interesting experience recently. In spite of my state of Kerala having quite a few active hams and press coverage on ham radio during disaster relief, one boy had to contact another ham about 2000 km away, in North India, on Reddit to get information on local hams!
@VU2JO I spent my childhood near Kochi, Kerala. Came to bangalore much later and immediately found IIH. I enrolled for the exam through them. I also kept in touch with Raj VU2ZAP and through some other yahoo groups (vuhams etc). I am no longer in those mailing lists.
Nice to hear that you were at Kochi! I am at Kozhikode, which is hardly 200 km from Kochi. I took my first ASOC exam at Kochi in 1983, when it was held there by @VU2ARL at Chavara Cultural Centre. Started operating in 1985 as VU2JFP with grade 1 license. @VU2JYN and friends organized an exam at our college when I could appear and upgrade to Advanced Grade and become VU2JO in 1988!
