4X/G4UZN 1988 Israel

It was a surprise to see my 4X/G4UZN QSL on Hamgallery. I can't believe it was twenty years ago. The story is, our daughter was 14 years old and at school, and had a pen-friend in Tel-Aviv. We decided to go there for a vacation, and before we went I found out how to get a licence and how to get to the Israel Amateur Radio Club, where they would let me do a bit of operating. The pen-friend with her father met us off the plane and gave us a lift to our hotel. While we were talking, I mentioned amateur radio, and he said, Oh - a friend of mine is a radio amateur.... So I ended up getting on the air from both the club in Tel-Aviv, and the friend's shack in Holon (a suburb), and it was good training for my XYL to get used to it that wherever we went on vacation there always seemed to be radio amateurs around... There were sunspots in those days ... At that time, Russian amateurs were not allowed to work Israeli's, but could work visitors using the 4X/ prefix. So every time I called CQ I got a million Russians calling, like I was on Spratly or Scarborough Reef.... I even worked the club back home here in Leeds. G4UZN

QSL from the estate of W4LWS
Story by G4UZN