In late December, I decided to apply for my late father’s old callsign “N8OVU”. It finally came through at the end of January. I’m happy to dumb KF0BVG, I wasn’t thrilled with the callsign.
I also thought about chasing down “KC6NMD” and maybe I’ll do that some day. Or maybe not.
My dad used to call himself “the General”, he was pretty proud of his accomplishment – he was licensed back in the days when you had to pass the Morse code requirement and he loved doing CW.
We both fell out of the hobby around the same time but he kept his license going even after he had been off the air for several years.
We both started our journey to become ham radio operators in the late 80s when I was overseas station in Japan. I got my first callsign: KC6JKN at the end of 1989 and my general in June of 1990.
He was first licensed as KB8LON, I don’t know exactly when but he was studying code seemingly forever. He used to send me cassette tape ‘letters’ where he talked about his code practice. I still have a couple of those tapes, it’s a little sad listening to them, but I love that I still have some way to hear his voice – and a sample of him sending his callsign.
Good bye, KF0BVG, seems like I hardly knew ya.