Iranians make nice with Amateur Radio Operators

A new commentary every Wednesday - February 11, 2015

2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the American Radio League (ARRL), since an engineer, Hiram Maxim, of Newington, Connecticut, who was a pioneer in the hobby, started the organization of experimenters who have used high frequency and ultra-high frequency radio transmitting equipment to communicate with other operators all over the world— and those in the International Space Station as well— since 1905.

I guess you could call this an "exclusive," since I haven't read or seen anything in the major media about it. This story is about Iran inviting a 10-man team of "hams" (a misnomer, because some Brits spoke with an accent that made them say "hamateurs") to come to Iran last month and joined a team of Iranian radio amateurs in making contacts with other afficianados of the hobby all over the world, via an Iranian club station (call letter ID: EP6T), located on an island in the Arabian gulf, just off the Iranian mainland.

Some of the non-Iranian operators who journeyed to Kish Island came from relatively nearby Greece and Italy, others from the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and the United States. They are members of a club of amateur operators who journey to locations where more often, no radio contact has ever been made, like some tiny island in the Pacific, or a location where no ham has operated for a number of years, for example, Tibet. Now, more than 60,000 operators outside of Iran can claim a contact with an Iranian Station. I made mine in 1959, with a US ham from Tucson, who was at the time a radar operator, tracking Gary Powers' flights over Russia, from a radar station in Iran. He had somehow obtained a amateur operator's license from Iran. (He didn't reveal what he was doing when we connected. Only much later).

This time, I couldn't breach what we hams call the "Atlantic Wall," the scores of American operators on the east coast vying to make a brief contact with EP6T. It sounded like a huge flock of geese taking off or sometimes like four jet engines firing at the same time, as scores of hams shouted out their call and then listened for a response, after one of the hams on Kish, sometimes Iranian, had said he was listening on a particular frequency. All, Iranians and otherwise, spoke English.

In case you haven't perceived where I'm going with this, here's what made this story noteworthy to me: no radio contact has been made between Iranian operators and other operators in other countries since the fall of the Shah and the theocratic revolution there in 1979!

Between January 17th and 29th, 2015, the operators of club station EP6T, supervised by Dr. Azim Fard, General Director of the CRA, the Iranian Ham organization, made more than 68,000 contacts with amateur operators outside of Iran. I will know in 90 days or so exactly how many licensed amateurs in the US were successful in getting through the "pile-up," after the U.S. operators at EP6T compile their results for the ARRL. One of the American visitors to Iran said that something like 30 Iranian officials had already come to oversee the operation. (!?!) So, the Revolutionary Council and Khomeini had to give this unique opening their blessing. You can bet some, if not all of the Iranian visitors were members of the Iranian intelligence service.

The last I heard was that the non-Iranians were allowed to be on Kish for only 10 days and they were going to tear-down their antennae and fly to Belgium, this past weekend, where several of the "ROCK DX" group live. (D.X. is a hold-over from the "dot-dash" days, and means "Long distance." When I say in spoken English: "This is K7OS (my call-sign) calling "DX," it means I want to talk to any station outside of the USA.).

Since there are more licensed Amateur stations in the USA (70,000+) than anywhere, I would guess that up to 10,000 or more of them will dispatch a confirmation postal card, or an electronic card to the Iranians, (It took me 30 years to get confirmation of contacts with 100 different countries) and get a postal card back from Iran. You can bet that the Iranian government already knows exactly who, when and how every American operator in the USA contacted Hammid, one of the Iranian Amateurs contacted or one of the Americans on the team of non-Iranians operators who came to Kish Island, such as Floyd Gerald of Wiggin, Mississippi. (Call letters: N5FG).

I already know a lot about Floyd, and about other members of the team: Patrick Godderie (ON4HIL) of Belgium, Frank, PA3EWP of the Netherlands and Kotas (SV1DPI of Greece). All are listed in an on-line directory. (See link two paragraphs below).

So, what is the significance of this? Dr. Fard said he was going to keep this friendly exchange going. He wants U.S. operators to return and teach electronics and communication skills to Iranian youth. That will happen.

More importantly, he or anyone can go to http://www.qrz.com - fill out a simple registration form and access the name, rank, address, possible employment/career, possibly phone number and more than likely eMail addresses of hundreds of thousands of amateur radio operators, most of them in the USA. I've already done it to obtain the identity of six of the operators who went to Kish Island, one of whom was EP3MIR, Mohammed Mobini, who lists an address in Tehran.

One can be sure that the detente between American and Iranian operators will continue at many levels.

There may be nothing sinister about this unique opening. It may be nothing but a propaganda ploy aimed at getting restrictions on Iran lifted. Making nice. But, it could be much more.

The CIA, State and Department of Defense would die to have this sort of opening and access, that Iran now possesses.

The major media—I called NBC and CBS—and they haven't a clue.

-Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller

Phil's current post can be read at: http://www.imrightagain.com

If you wish to comment, Phil can be reached at:

k7os (at) comcast (dot) net

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