UR0UCH 1992 Ukraine

65th anniversary of the 1st USA - USSR contact!

UR0UCH (Special call for UB5UBH, 1991). 65th anniversary of first contact USA - USSR.

UB5UCH had found a link indicating that in the July issue of Radio Amateur magazine for July 1926 ( a Russian magazine ) there was an article saying that Ukrainian radio amateur I. Nikitin first heard signals from an American broadcast station, thereby setting an amateur reception record. Eventually, a copy of that magazine was found in the possession of a Russian collector.

"From 25 January to 1 February 1926, Internation Radio Week took place. This was a broadcasters' event, with silent periods to ease reception, a Test to explore transatlantic reception possibilities.
The magazine reported:
"On January25, 1926 at 6.15 a.m., engineer I Nikitin from Mironovka, Kiev Province, on a regenerative receiver and an antenna 35 meters long, at a frequency of 483.6 meters, heard a programme of the WOC broadcast station in Davenport, Iowa; Herman's aria " What is our life? A game " from Tchaicovsky's opera The Queen of Spades.
The Palmer Small Symphony Orchestra broadcast a program consisiting of the works of one of the world's greatest composers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Russian"
I Nikitin told the WOC station the reception time, the concert program, the call sign, Morse Code letters given between the numbers, and asked for a confirmation.
The result was a letter from America from the WOC Radiophonic Station confirming what was written; we are sure today that this is the first case of the audibility of an American broadcasting station in Russia " ( today in Ukraine).

In honor of the 65th anniversary of the first US radio contact between the USSR and the USSR, Boris Mikhailovich designed the special call sign UR0UCH.
So this was a reception of a broadcast station, not a two-way amateur contact.

It might be considered rather too much of a coincidence that reception was from WOC, rather than from any of the more powerful broadcasters, and that the programme was of an aria from a Russian opera, although verification of such does seem to have been received.

G4UZN Collection
Info ourtesy of G4UZN from the web site of the Russian Delta Club