WELCOME TO MY PAGE!
LAST UPDATE
=OCTOBER 5,2000=
![[My photo]](george2d.jpg)
Visit this Page often for updated News, Info and Photo Galleries. See pictures of the friends you hear on the air and lots more. My ambition is to make this a central Page, written by Greeks for Greeks. To accomplish this the Page needs your cooperation. Send your stories, your jokes and your
radio amateur encounters. Write them in any way you can and I will edit them for you. I will send you the finished product in order to get your approval and then I will publish it. Don't forget that the Page is also your open Forum for discussions. Any matter and any item will be accepted providing that it is written in a proper way, and in an accepted, style and manner. Try it you may like it! I'll be waiting...
WHAT IS NEW AND WHAT HAS CHANGED
I was thinking to start my text by offering some explanation for the change of the content of my Page and the reason for posting so many pictures of Greek radio amateurs from Diaspora and from Greece.
I guess the reason is very simple! The change will bring some relief from having to write page, after page, after page, not an easy job because I had to think a lot and this I found to be a very difficult task requiring the consumption of gray matter! What did I write? Now I have to look into the Dictionary to find out what gray matter is... I also thought that the posting of the pictures would create some additional interest to the Page and at the same time generate endless discussions over the air.
The News section will be updated as soon as I get new info about matters relative to our hobby and immediately after the News section you will find any work sent by our friends. (I have to repeat here that you can send your text in Greek or in English and I'll do the translation). Yes I do believe it sounds now like a broken record but again ONLY John,W8GXU wrote an article ( again a good one, as always)and even if he is busy, always tries to help. Thanks John. You are a real amateur and a good friend, indeed.
The pictures are stored in a different link of the Page and now, at the beginning, you have to do a little work in order to see them and perhaps they are not appealing as much as I wanted to, but be patient I promise to learn soon how to handle them. This is a very important matter for me. Since they all say that " one picture worth a 1000 words" (that's why the computer needs 1000 times more time to download a picture!) I'll post a few thousand...words at every new update!
This Page is quite different from other Pages, because even for the Various Links you'll find here, I have added a few words, explaining what they are. I try to simplify matters, to make things easier for you, so you won't have to waste much time. Once again, please sent your comments and your suggestions and I will publish them exactly as you wrote them or I will edit them if you so desire. Don't forget this is YOUR Page. It is the Page for all Greek radio amateurs. So don't be shy! Send your cooperation to the Page. You will contribute a lot to our common cause. In case you need any clarification, or for any other reason, contact me via e-mail.
My e-mail address: gevan@rochester.rr.com
To go directly choose and click on any topic below, or continue reading.
M E N U
The Miracle.
Many years ago I saw a movie -a good movie- depicting a miracle, witnessed by small children who saw, several times, the Holy Virgin in a field. The movie was sponsored by the Vatican. At the very beginning, they showed a preface which, I now have to squeeze my memory, read as follows.." This movie deals with a miracle. For those who do believe there is no need for an explanation. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible"...My dear friends, do you believe in miracles? I'm sure some of you will say yes, others no. But no matter what your answer will be, you have to admit that a miracle which took place a couple of months ago in Aspropyrgos, a town just a
few kilometers west of Athens, was a real one...
And now we all know about this miracle, as many had witnessed it,, and we also learned who the miracle worker was. The miracle was the Greek hamfest which this year, for the first time, was housed in a building (protected from the elements and the intense Greek sunshine) and the miracle worker was Christos, SV1CEQ...Christos somehow knew, from work association, that the Municipality of Aspropyrgos owned a very large building and thought that building would be the best place to house the Greek Hamfest. He knew a few council members and the Mayor himself. To cut the long story short he succeeded in getting permission for the Greek Radio Amateur Club of Greece to use the said building.
The Hamfest 2000 was a great success. Of course there were comments, lots of comments, by participants and visitors who were elated because the Hamfest was indoors, and lasted two days instead of one. But there were a few comments, from visitors, not as favorable, but eh! what did you expect from the citizens of the number one Democratic country in the whole world ?They are always free to express their opinion and we all know the Greek saying .."each one is free to say his short and his long..." But the truth is that the Hamfest was an astounding success. So we the Greek Radio Amateurs of Diaspora partaking in the success of the Hamfest, we express here our deepest appreciation to the Mayor and the council of Aspropyrgos for offering the building which made the Hamfest such an enormous, a fantastic, success ...Now as far as Christos,SV1CEQ, we all know how modest he is, but no matter how he feels, we must offer (without getting his permission) our hearty congratulations to him for a job well done! Christo, you are great! OK, OK I won't say anything else...
We should not forget that the great success of the Greek Hamfest 2000 was mainly due to the enormous effort by the council and many members of the Radio Amateur Association of Greece. It takes a lot to
organize a Hamfest of such magnitude. They had to face many difficulties and go through many hidden obstacles. They succeeded magnificently. Our hearty congratulations for their accomplishment and we wish them a better and greater Hamfest in the year 2001!
At the end of the next segment, you'll be able to go to the internal link where you'll see the pictures taken at the Hamfest by our good friend Theodor, SV1HK. We all know the untiring Theodor who always tries to help, so our great appreciation goes also to him, for a fantastic photographic job, very well done indeed...Theodor you are "to kati allo!!!" And now for the Pictures go to the next segment "Pictures from the Greek Hamfest 2000.
Pictures from the Greek Hamfest 2000.
My dear friends, finally I was able to find a way to present to you the 58 pictures taken by our good friend Theodor SV1HK
at the Greek Hamfest 2000. I downloaded the pictures from the Web Site of our good friend Lazaros,M0BFV. I remember, at that time, my computer was very...sick! Thanks Lazaros you 're very kind and a true radio amateur..
Just looking at the pictures you immediately get the impression that Theodor was moving around a lot, meeting many of his radio amateur friends.
Needles to say that for me and for many hundreds of Greek Radio Amateurs of Diaspora, this is a unique opportunity to see the faces of many friends we meet and talk with over the air. Once again our hearty congratulations to Theodor SV1HK for his fantastic job in taking and distributing all the pictures of the Hamfest.Theodor, thanks a million !
To find the callsigns of the hams in any picture, rest the mouse on that picture. Some callsigns are missing (you see question marks in their place), but I promise to find them soon...I hope! It will take some time for the pictures to be downloaded to your computer, so please be patient.To enlarge any picture click on it
To see the pictures now, click below on GREEK HAMFEST 2000. When you'll have finished with the pictures, follow the instructions at the end and you will return to the same point of the PAGE you were before to go to the pictures. ...ENJOY!
With the change in propagation we face some difficult situations during the late evening hours in the US which translates into early morning hours in Europe,
when there are no Greek stations on the frequency and as a result other stations may get on the spot and start using it.
If we want to use the frequency we must keep it in use! Oh, it is so simple! I guess we can arrange for some state side stations to be on the net at those times. I'm sure they won't be too many volunteers but you never know.
I'm ready to put my name on the list ...We can invite our friends from the West to participate if the time is suitable to them...We can have one or two from the South and same number from North East.....I'm sure the VKs from Australia will not refuse their presence and I hope
those "early" birds from Greece will respond to this call.
I was thinking to join the SETI project (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and I had a lengthy discussion with a friend who is participating. After that I had second thoughts. If Extraterrestrials do exist out there (I confess to you that I believe they do) then if they are Intelligent they should stay away from us.......If they are technologically advanced they have by now seen all the bad things we do to ourselves, to our planet, to our.......everything! Would you like to associate with creatures like us? I'm serious. Do you?
I believe "contact" with people from other planets would be possible in the future only if we reach the point
where ALL human beings on planet Earth would enjoy a peaceful and "humane" life. The key word here is ALL!
As I write this segment I still have in my ears the words of the TV announcer who was excited reading the news last night, about the discovery of new planets outside our solar system...There are a few...million light years away but they exist and who knows...Some astronomers out there probably had announced the discovery of...our planet Earth, a little nothing in the vast Cosmos.
Send your comments or your ideas to this column. I'll be glad to help in editing your work if you so desire, but I will gladly do the required translation. I promise.
Let me go through a typical day in the life of this "coffee house". I live in Ohio, about a thousand kilometers west of New York city. My first action as soon as I wake up in the morning, before I even have breakfast, is to turn on the transceiver. It is tuned to 14.285 MHZ, of course. All I hear is noise. I look at the direction indicator of the beam. It is pointing south west, where I left it the previous evening. I start swinging the beam north east, to point it towards Greece. As the beam swings, I hear a faint Greek voice. Stop the beam! Just a little east of north. It is Dionisis OH2JSR, from Finland! I fine tune the beam position, and now Dionisis is solid copy. We have a short QSO. Short ,because I hear my neighbor, John AA8OV, tapping his key. I know his " fist ". He is a former Greek Merchant Marine Radio Officer, as are many of our fellow Greek hams. When they work their keys, they make music out of Morse Code! I reply with my call sign. We talk for a while, with Dionisi on the side.
Soon Stavros AC5FG, another former Radio Officer, from Texas, shows up. Antonis NK4Y, from Florida, Antonis VE5BO,from Northwest Canada, Kostas VE3CLG,from Ontario Canada, Dionisis VE3HYJ, from Toronto Canada, Kostas VA2BBC,George VE2YEP,Kostas VE2JKA,Philippas VE2SDS,Simeon VA2JIM, all from Montreal Canada, Dino W5DBG,from Oklahoma, George KE2WQ,Spiros KD2QC,From New York state, Spiros N3SV, Alekos N3DGO,from Pennsylvania, Nikos KD3QY,from California, and many others, make their appearance. Short and medium skip are working well. The coffee house is full.
And now one hears a unique utilization of a frequency. Normally, only two people talk on a frequency. But you now hear several QSOs going on at once, some on CW, some on phone. Beams help. They can point the signal in a desired direction reducing the interference to an acceptable level. It is like sitting in a real coffee house, a conversation going on at each table. But we manage. We have achieved the maximum transfer of information on a single frequency. Nyquist, a proffessor who developed the mathematics for information transfer, would be proud of us...We manage! If you tune a few KHZ away from the frequency, you will hear comments from our fellow American hams, that the "Greeks" on 14.285 talk all at once. Yes, we appear a little disorganized... but man, do we communicate !
A short break for a quick breakfast, and back on the radio. Boy, is it sweet to be retired !
The coffee house patrons leave one by one, but it is never empty. Soon, the Greek hams of the Sea, show up. Miltiadis SV1SB/MM, George SV4BPG/MM, Evangelos SV1CAX/MM, and many others... It is hard to keep the beam pointed properly, since they are literally from all the corners of the world...A little break to do some chores for the XYL.
By early afternoon, faint signals from Greece show up. Christos SV1CEQ Dimitris,SV1AOV, Christos SV1DT, make their appearance as the signals gain in strength. Nikos SV1AMA, is heard from the Saronic Gulf, Maritime Mobile from his "antitorpilliko" Saint Nicholas, his fishing boat. John SV1GE, shows up from his penthouse shack on top of his building in Glyfada,a seaside suburb of Athens. I have seen his roof. It is a forest of antennas.
In an hour, the signals from Greece are all S9 ! Short skip has disappeared. What a pleasure! The hams from northern Greece make their presence known. Socrates SV2CCW, Kostas SV2CWW, Dimitris SV7CHP, and many others, make the "coffee house" lively.
Soon Nikos SV1AMA, is on land, in his regular QTH, putting out a king size signal. He puts a little order on the frequency, giving the weaker signals a chance to be heard. He leads "the 300 of Leonidas", as he likes to call the Greek hams all over the world,( but we do number in the thousands!).
It is now early evening in Ohio, and the noise again predominates. Time to have dinner, relax and get ready for the late evening bash. Around 11:00 PM, the band opens up. Dino W5DBG, my neighbor John AA8OV, Vasilis SV5TS, from Rhodes, George DL4SV from southwest Germany are present,Lazaros M0BFV,from England with a nice signal, George VK2GBG, from Australia comes on, and I swing my beam southwest to hear him a little better. For a half hour, signals are S9,but they die down fast. Time to leave the "coffee house". WE all had our "fix" for the day.
73.......... John ,w8gxu.
I'm sure you are accustomed to see or hear the News at least once a day...The reason I brought it up is because without news in today's world one will be almost blind. And we come to the medium called "computer". You should take good care of your computer...Not so much as to what you do to it, but what you do with it. The digital world of the computers has created its own dimension and behaves somehow differently than the rest of the real world ...The important thing is to know how to protect your computer and by protecting your computer you will be protecting yourself...
Question #1.Do you know what cookies are? No, no I didn't mean those sweet things your XYL keeps in a jar for the kids and which you...raid from time to time. I mean the computer or better yet,
the Internet cookies....A cookie in Internet terms is a small packet of information about you. The information is requested by a Web site you are visiting and is stored as a file in your computer and as a result it makes using that particular site much easier and faster to visit by providing that Web site with information about you such as, what pages you visited (and of course what kind of sites you visited), products you have ordered, your name, address, phone number, credit card info, etc, etc. This info is then given back to the Web site you're visiting now or in future visits. When you visit the Web site, the site asks your computer for the cookie that is specific to that site and reads the info about you. Some say that the cookies are not that bad others hate them(me too) but it is true that some sites do not operate properly ( or not at all)without them. But you may not like the idea of unknowingly giving a Web site information about you or having that information available on your computer for "strangers"...You can choose not to accept cookies and if you use Netscape Navigator (I do) go to Browser Menu item EDIT>PREFERENCES>ADVANCED and choose an option:
a) Warn if cookies are offered
b) Accept all cookies
c) Reject all cookies
To finish click Apply. If you use Internet Explorer from the Menu select VIEW>INTERNET OPTIONS>the ADVANCED tab. Go to the Cookies section choose your desired option and then click Apply. Those companies running the Web sites somehow need the cookies with the info about you, in order to allow you to use their services, especially if those services are FREE! For a test try to uncheck the "Cookies" in your Browser Preferences and then if you use a program for a free Internet connection see if that connection still works....So you choose what option you want but at least if you didn't know before what "cookies" were, now you are an expert, sort of....
I would like to say a few words about the PSK31 mode of communications which is using a radio and a computer...It is a keyboard to keyboard operation like the ones already in use and so far the first reports talk about good performance, subject to band conditions...The QST, and other magazines, had articles about PSK31.
I talked to John,W8GXU about PSK31 and what he thought of the two of us getting into it....John's reply was like the usual W8GXU reply..."Not very satisfactory, lacks speed and perhaps not much different from the other digital/radio modes...Why to go into complex systems if you have the simplest and best mode involving the human factor, namely the CW, ready and waiting in every transceiver? But, he continued, if you really desire to have a shot at it, wait until I finish a couple of projects I'm working on right now..."The eternal John,W8GXU...always building some rig, some interface, some converter but always something "new". John, I admire you.
If you want to hear the PSK31 signal go to 14,071 KHZ on 20 meters and listen for a couple of minutes. The signal resembles about a dozen! RTTY signals going on at the same time.Yes you are right the computer program separates them...
Back to computers. We hear about user Internet Privacy, Viruses, hackers and Companies on the Internet that do create
DATA BASES of Internet users, profiling their preferences and the frequency with which they visit
various sites and WHAT kind of sites they visit....
Perhaps you have no idea that these things really happen and that people, who don't know you,
collect information about you...and of course they plan to use it in some way -Good or Bad-but I can assure you that they'll use it sooner or later. You will ask, "How can they do that?" The details are somehow complex but the way I can explain them to you is exactly the way I have understood them
All the computers have ports through which data is sent out and data received from the Internet. Various companies use programs which create a special ID which stays in your computer. When you connect to their site, the remote
computer probes your computer's ports (each computer has up to 65,000 ports) and tries to find the open ones.
Yes they use special scanners to do that, usually in lightning speed. Through your ports they retrieve-WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION- all kinds of information which you have stored in your computer.
I'm sure right
now you feel a strange feeling and you think that all these are, definitely,
pure fiction...Well, all my life I was trying to tell the truth and tell always something only when I was sure 100% that it was true.
I'll write ,at the end of this section, the URL of the company [Steve Gibson, Research Corporation] which fights for our Internet Privacy.
Send your comments, but first visit the site. I bet my computer mouse that you will be surprised from what you are going to learn at that site. I expect to receive comments from many of you. Please write in your e-mail if you want to see your comments published in our Forum section.
http://grc.com/
The above e-mail addresses are correct -to the best of my knowledge-as of August 1st 2000. The radio amateurs who have e-mail addresses should post them in one of the Callsign Services which are free.The one that comes to mind right now is the following:
Buckmaster Callbook
http://www.buck.com/cgi-bin/do_hamcall
In very simple words the following Links will take you close to the Ideal that is GREECE. No doubt that the older of us had been there. Then, I'm sure, when they will visit these Links, some nice patriotic memories will resurface.
The younger generation, which has little time to study the Greek
History and the Great Greek Tradition and Culture, will find many interesting and
exhilarating things which we always keep close to our heart. Let me think, don't they say that a Master's painting never needs a golden frame, so the Links that follow need
no praises from me... I want to draw your attention to the Link XRYSA LOGIA ( Golden Words) of my good friend George,SV1AM. He did a very nice job and you will return to his Link over and over... ENJOY!
I have added Web Pages of Greek amateurs who live outside Greece -in Diaspora- and frankly many of them have done a superb job in putting together some fabulous Web Pages. Please pay extra attention when you visit any Web Page of your fellow radio amateurs, you may learn a few things that they don't exist any where else. It will be a very nice thing-at the end of your visit- to sign their visitors book-if they have one- and definitely you must send an e-mail message with your comments about their Page. Don't forget your NETIQUETTE!
It is a good idea to visit all these Web pages, at least once, because all of them are very interesting especially to the visitors who live outside our "Fatherland". To visit a Web page just click on the call sign.
I'm not sure which Page is working and which has been closed a long time ago. I ask all of you, when you have some extra time, to check these Pages to find out the "dead" ones and please notify me, so I'd be able to weed them out.
......73,
![[the Acropolis and suns of Vergina]](acr50.jpg)
