Sur les ondes

A ham radio site I frequently visit recently asked the following question:
What ham radio achievement from years ago do you still think about and remember with pride?

It's a great question. And it opens up so many possibilities.

For me, there would be lots of candidates and I've told you about many of them. I have achieved many of them since my I got back Sur les ondes (on the airwaves) in 2021.

But one in particular comes to mind. Before I get into the details, some background.

When my two closest friends and I went to high school, the subject of foreign language came up in some of our curriculum planning discussions. Normally, we would have all registered for the same classes. We did this with World Geography, for instance.  But where foreign language was concerned, we all went in different directions. 

One signed up for Latin, another picked Spanish, I chose French. Just a curiosity more than anything.

I made a good choice as I excelled. Guess that is one indication that language is a strong suit in our family. It's a good thing, right?

By August 1980, I had three years of high school French under my belt heading into a fourth. I was getting pretty good at it. By then, I was also an experienced CW (morse code) operator.

On Sunday the 24th, I turned on my rigs and settled in for an afternoon of DX operating via CW.

My logbook for that day shows I made contacts with stations in Bulgaria, Ireland, Poland and West Germany among others. And I also made contact with a French station, F6FSG. The QSO seems to have lasted roughly a half hour.

The station's location was in Southern France; the town was Perpignan. The operator's name was Suzanne. She was roughly my age. 

Now, imagine the mindset of a teenage boy full of bravado. For the next half hour, I kicked my language skills into high gear. 

My dad used to say that when you master morse code, it becomes a group of sounds rather than individual dots and dashes. For example, a question mark .._ _ .. sounds like "ditty dum dum ditty." My name, which I have sent thousands of times over the years, ditdahdahdah dit dittydahdit dittydahdit.

So, it becomes hard-wired into your brain. And since English is the international language for ham radio operators, we Americans have the home court advantage, so to speak.

Now imagine tearing all of that up, on the fly, to impress a teenage French girl who was also "Sur les ondes" that day. Instead of falling back to my usual ham radio English, I did a quick translation of English to French and French to morse code. That's fast thinking!

I think I impressed her. At least, I hope so. The QSO went on for 30 minutes until the band shifted and we had to sign off. 

At any rate, when I read the question about a ham radio accomplishment, this is the one that comes to mind. And, in a way, it sets the standard for me to think en français when I am talking to a French operator. I still try to add a few phrases if not do an entire cycle in their home language rather than mine.

A footnote: I went to QRZ.com the other day to see if Suzanne is still active as an amateur radio operator and she does have a listing under the same call sign. It looks like she has moved her QTH (location) to the Paris suburbs. There was no photo, email address or any sort of bio info. So, my fact finding stops there.

Who knows? Maybe I'll run into her on the air again sometime. If not, it's still pretty cool to think of my fast thinking and one of my favorite ham radio moments from a late summer Sunday afternoon all those years ago.

JG