المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية

It's 03.00 and Abdoun, Amman's district is the qth. Finnaly ...

No one at home, except me and three Syrian girls. It's friday - The Arabian Knights Net day. There is no JY licence in my hands yet, so I send several sms just to let them know I'm in the background.

At the evening Ali bumps into the shack, straight from Beirut. It's our first eyeball ever and he's someone with whom I had a chat for hours/days/years. Just ask his wife Hoda at about it. One day we talked long before she started to drive from Amman via Damascus to Beirut and when she arrived there, we were still chatting. Poor woman she almost got a shock.

Couple of days passed and we went to Dr. Munther JY5HX. He is a very busy man, however he found some time to help me with obtaining the licence. Afterwards, Ibrahim JY5IM came to visit and he brought good news that Mohammad JY4MB had arranged everything.

First CQ on 20m and reply from RW3XZ. Conditions were so so, however sometimes the pile up was so big I started to operate by the numbers (reason for that was just to clear the frequency, so why some people continue to call with the wrong numbers I don't know).

Pacific, African, South & North American op's are OK.

Asian - Japanese/Korean are even more disciplined. But their English pronouncation is very hard to understand for me.

European, with some bright exceptions are even worse then I have expected. I am not the best operator, that's for sure. But ...

In the pile up it's hard to copy signals with the low modulation and some are very, very deep. Any clue what can we do about it? That's OK, however;

Calling out turn (for example GL do means GL. Why so many are calling with every other letter in the alphabet except GL, it's an real enigma for me). If I gave 59 report that's my own decision, not from anyone else.
Making qrm, or tuning exactly on my frequency for minutes.
It seems that some people do think, that ham radio is a combat zone. If so, why are they not going somewhere in the real war, instead on the amateur radio? Also some do forget this is not a citizen band, where they scream one above another all the time and not listen.
There is no need to repeat your call several times, once will do.
Even if you are qrp (are you really?), why to mention that in a pile up? I have no idea. After all your sufix is not qrp, is it?
And not to forget bogus callsigns ...

This hobby of mine is to make friends, not enemies. Sometimes I had a feeling that some are trying to be exactly that! Hmmm, why are they calling me then?

So, here you can see me 30m up doing something at the antennas and not to thinking about the quality of some operators.



Mahmoud JY5HL and after 15 years on the radio with Zedan JY3ZH (do you remember Shakespeare) are the gentlemans with whom I had also a pleasure to meet in person.

One morning Ali told me, go and check your email. And what do I see - my OD5 licence. TNX OD5TE!
After few days my friend went back to Lebanon, so I started to tour H.K. of Jordan. I was all around, but my favourite areas are Petra, Wadi Rum, Aqaba (for scuba diving only), Madaba, Jerash, Umm Qays, Quasyr 'Amra and of course dead sea.

Who said that there is no environment consciousness in the Middle East? You should drive from Ajlun to Irbid and on the left side of the highway you'll see, what I had seen.


On my return to Amman I operated for a couple of hours from JY5HX place on WARC bands, meet his family and one evening we visited Ibrahim JY5IN. Now the conditions were realy bad and my last qso was with the YL1ZS, when 4746-th contact was in my log.

So, dear reader, my own experience was warm and friendly welcome in this country, which is also very safe, regardless of surrounding hot spots in the area. I've meet some nice people and made good friends. Is there anyone on this planet who could tell me, what could a ham operator wish more from such a trip? From my heart - I can't!

So, to anyone who managed to work me and is in my log - thank you, I did enjoy and you were a part of this.

Now, would you like to see some pictures of JY operators?