Was Gagarin a Radio Ham ? A new amateur radio promotional leaflet produced by the Dutch national society VERON perpetuates the myth that Yuri Gagarin was a radio amateur VERON has made the leaflet available in a convenient PDF format to enable amateurs to print it out to give away at fairs, open days, or just to friends, family or neighbours. As well as providing a good explanation of the hobby the leaflet lists some famous radio amateurs, one of those they quote is Yuri Gagarin UA1LO. This myth appears to have arisen from an article by Joe Kasser G3ZCZ in the March/April 1981 issue of the AMSAT Orbit magazine. In it he says that Yuri Gagarin, the first person to fly in space, was UA1LO. Joe based that assertion on the fact that W8DX had received a QSL card for a contact that took place on May 19, 1962 from a Russian radio amateur UA1LO whose name just happened to be "Yuri". The QSL card contained a picture of Yuri Gagarin, but it was not unknown for Russian amateurs of the time to celebrate the historic achievement in this way. The spaceflight had taken place just over a year earlier and was a source of immense pride to many Russians. Given that the last name of UA1LO was not given on the card, and Yuri is anyway a common name in Russia, the connection appears tenuous. To date, no-one has provided any evidence that Yuri Gagarin ever held an amateur licence. Download the VERON amateur radio leaflet at https://www.veron.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Zendamateur-radioamateur-of-radiozendamateur.pdf 2002 AMSAT Bulletin Board explanation of the confusion about UA1LO http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/amsat-bb/200209/msg00249.html A list of more than 100 Cosmonauts and Astronauts who have held amateur radio licenses is at http://www.ariss.org/hams-in-space.html http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2016/may/was_gagarin_a_radio_ham.htm
There are various lists of so -called famous hams, many ex-hams, and 90% dead. Not very inspiring, given that reality. The one I corrected was Jim Croce. I emailed his widow--very nice person-- and she said it was Croce's dad who was licensed: they were senior and Junior apparently.
Damned russian propagnda, they always give fake information. Yes, its not russians give this info, but...
yes.... read my article named " FAMOUS HAM RADIO & VIPs IN THE WORLD" ..... in this article i debate the question about gagarin was or not a real OM ! download here: http://rodolfo-parisio.jimdo.com/nuovi-articoli-2015/ best 73 de Rudy - IW2BSF
Must be Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin that did such awful thing to claim first ham in space. And, first ham sandwich which Yuri had for lunch that evil day.
A search on this site gives the following info for UA1LO UA1LO Russia Yuri D. Babkov 196233 St-Peterburg, P.O. Box 44 Russia
At that time most pilots and navigators were required to be able to recognize morse characters in order to be able to identify navigation beacons. That typically was a "recognition" test of individual characters, not copying messages.
Has anyone thought to contact these Volks? http://www.srr.ru/ I am sure They will have all of the records. 72
