“Calling All Ham Operators” by Ernie Cowan in the Jan. 7, 2021 issue of the Borrego Sun, awakened fond memories of my undergraduate days. I was a ham, back in India in the early 1980s before I came to the U.S. My call sign was Victor Uniform Two Sierra Japan Nancy (VU2SJN). Our station was Victor Uniform Two India India Tango (VU2IIT). We had a few radios shared among the students in the Ham Club at IIT Kanpur connected to a rooftop antenna, and most of the contacts we did were with Morse code.

The ham radio sounds that are embedded in my brain are dah-dit-dah-dit dah-dah-dit-dah for CQ, shorthand for Seek You repeated three times and then pausing to listen for a response. Night times were best to get in touch via short wave to distant shores and we would compete on how many contacts we could make in one night. Then we would anxiously await postcards from foreign lands to trickle in weeks later to confirm.

Sanjiv Nanda

– Borrego Springs, California