My story
My journey into amateur radio began with a practical goal: legally importing a Xiegu X6200 from China. I studied by distilling the question bank with AI, passed Basic with Honors in three days — and kept going. I now hold the Canadian Advanced certificate.
My call sign, VE4NAY, carries both halves of my life:
- VE4 for Manitoba, where I live now.
- NAY for Beijing Nanyuan Airport — where I grew up, and where my dreams took flight.
Before radio, I was a paramedic student. I wanted to serve Manitoba's diverse communities — especially Chinese immigrants who face language and cultural barriers in getting emergency care. Then came a seizure diagnosis. It cost me my professional driver's license — and in this field, that license is a hard gate: without it, no practicum, no graduation, and no service that could hire me. The career I had crossed the world for ended before it began.
So I built something no diagnosis could revoke. Self-taught — K&R's C book and Swift Playgrounds are my whole formal training — I spent eight days reverse-engineering a 2009 Japanese weather-fax program and rewriting it from scratch as Isobar, an open-source decoder now running on macOS, Windows and Linux. The same constraint that ended one career shaped how I work: my memory is not always reliable, so I write everything down, and I let nothing important live only in my head.
As a young, transgender woman — often the only person like me in the room — I see radio as more than a hobby: it is a platform for visibility, connection, and inclusion. The mission hasn't changed, only the medium: to listen, to advocate, and to connect.
我的故事
我的业余无线电之旅始于一个务实的目标：合法清关一台从中国购买的协谷 X6200。我借助 AI 提炼题库，三天便以「荣誉通过」拿下 Basic 证书——并且没有 停下脚步，如今持有加拿大 Advanced 证书。
我的呼号 VE4NAY，装着人生的两半：
- VE4 代表曼尼托巴，我如今生活的地方。
- NAY 源自北京南苑机场的 IATA 代码——我成长的地方， 也是「梦开始的地方」。
在无线电之前，我是一名院前急救学生。我想服务曼尼托巴的多元文化社区， 尤其是那些在紧急医疗面前面临语言与文化障碍的华人移民。后来，一纸癫痫 诊断改变了一切：我因此失去了职业驾照。而急救这行，驾照是硬性门槛： 没有它，就无法实习、无法毕业，也没有任何机构能够录用。那份我跨越半 个地球去追的职业，在开始之前便结束了。
于是我去造了一样任何诊断都收不走的东西。全靠自学——K&R 的 C 语言 教材和 Swift Playgrounds 就是我全部的「科班训练」——我用八天时间逆向了 一个 2009 年的日本气象传真软件，并从零重写为开源解码器 Isobar，如今运行在 macOS、Windows 和 Linux 上。终结了 一份职业的那个约束，也塑造了我的工作方式：我的记忆并不总是可靠，所以 我把一切都写下来，不让任何重要的东西只活在我的脑子里。
作为一名年轻的跨性别女性——常常是房间里唯一「像我这样的人」——我视 无线电不仅为爱好，更是一个让多元被看见、被连接的平台。使命没有变，只是 换了媒介：倾听、倡导、连接。
