“HL9 ‘Texas’ ‘R’anger”
From April 1971 until late January of 1972, I was a U.S. Army Lieutenant commanding an air defense missile battery in Camp Howze Korea.
In
those days, there was no Internet and a telephone call from Korea to the United
States cost something like $10 a minute and few soldiers, to include myself,
could afford to actually place a telephone call home. However there was a way
to get in touch with loved ones and that was via MARS or Military Affiliate
Radio System, which was made up of amateur radio operators around the world. To
use MARS, a soldier would call up his local MARS station and tell the operators
that he wanted to speak with his wife or other loved one in Georgia or
California or some other state. The MARS operators would then attempt to make a
contact\connection with an amateur radio station as close as possible to a
soldier’s requested hometown and if a connection was made, the ham stateside
would connect his transmitter and receiver to the telephone lines via what is
known as a phone patch and after placing an actual telephone call to the
soldier’s home, for some short period of time, a soldier could talk with his
loved ones via the MARS radio linkup.
I
am not sure how long I was at Camp Howze before I learned there was a MARS
shack or station on the compound but one day, in my spare time; I found the
small building hosting the MARS station. Knocking on the door repeatedly for
several minutes, finally a sleepy eyed corporal answered the door and
immediately came to attention, sort of. He quickly explained that because radio
conditions between our compound and the United States was normally only good in
the late afternoon and early evening, the 2 soldiers manning the station
usually got their sleep in the late morning.
Looking
around, I found that the MARS station was made up completely of Collins KWM2
radio equipment, which at the time, was the best money could buy. Furthermore,
the station had a rhombic antenna outside, which was huge and finally, the
whole station shack stunk to high heavens of marijuana.
Collins
equipment not being used all the time: an idea formed in my head. Since I was
13, I had had an amateur radio license and if I could get a Korean license to
operate while I was in Korea, could probably get permission to use the MARS
equipment when conditions were not good for stateside phone patches.
Not
sure now how I went about it, but after a month or so, I did receive a Korean
amateur radio station license, HL9TR.
And
so begin my operation of the Collins equipment almost every day, calling out
“HL9 Texas Ranger” and getting the whole world calling back at me, wanting to
make a contact with me as there were so few English speaking Korea amateur
radio stations operating at the time.
Bible
translators in the jungles of South Pacific islands; 737 ground pilots moving
an aircraft around some airport; newly weds on a yacht sailing around the
world; a stateside contact now and again with some ham probably running more
power out of his gear than the legal limit; South America; Africa; India; Japan
regularly and China now and again.
Sitting
at the desk full of Collins gear and keying that transmitter and calling out
just one time, “CQ, CQ. This is HL9 TR. HL9 Texas Ranger” and then having my
headphones simply flooded with callbacks: an amateur radio operator’s dream.
I
guess I could have sought out a printer somewhere in my area but Camp Howze was
a small compound and the closest major city was Seoul and so I bought heavy
construction paper and made my own QSL cards. QSL cards are used by hams to
verify with various organizations that they have in fact made contact with a
specific country or US County or whatever. For every contact I made, I sent out
a QSL card as I knew the chances of some of the contacts I made ever contacting
a Korean, English speaking, station again was slim to none.
Oh, and the dope was not bad either.