For immediate release:
John David, VA3JHD, had a 42-year quest to become a certified Amateur Radio operator.
His story is told in an article by Justin Mowat, a CBC Hamilton reporter, which was published on December 31, 2019 on the CBC’s website at the link provided below.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
“In 1978, John David was surprised to discover — upon calling his parents in Hamilton, Ont. from the Golan Heights — that a five-minute conversation cost $20, a hefty chunk of change for a soldier making roughly $300 a month.
At the time, then-23-year-old David was a Canadian Forces soldier deployed for six months as a peacekeeper with the United Nations Disengagement Observation Force, tasked with supervising a ceasefire between Israel and Syria.
To keep in touch with his family back home in Canada, David sought a less expensive alternative to the telephone, which had suddenly become an unsustainable luxury of instant communication. But in the era pre-dating the internet, cell phones and satellite phones, alternatives were few and far between — apart from Morse code.
One day, during off duty hours while the majority of his colleagues were downing pints at the pub, David discovered the ‘ham shack’, and forged what became a life-long hobby. In the shack, David discovered a group of specially-trained soldiers, known as the Canadian Forces Affiliate Radio Systems (CFARS), who operated amateur radios.”
To find out about the rest of the story please read the article on the CBC website at the following link and watch for the “back story” of how John’s dream was realized in the March-April 2020 issue of The Canadian Amateur magazine.
CBC article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ham-radio-operators-hamilton-1.5408797
The Canadian Amateur magazine: https://www.rac.ca/tca/