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Erich Salewski Kiel, Germany QCWA # 19468 Chapter 106 First Call: DJ1PV |
 90th Birthday |
My career as a radio amateur.
I was born the son of a Reichsbahn employee in the small town of Liebstadt in East Prussia on October 25, 1923. There lived about 3,500 inhabitants and there was just an inflation in the Weimar Republic in Germany. My career as a radio amateur has already been marked by many coincidences in my earliest youth. My brother, ten years my senior, was a graduate of the then air news school in Insterburg. My interest in his education was very great. In addition, our physics teacher at the school was also news officer dR and us guys, already as a 10-year-old, had familiarized with the Morse code. Back then, during a teacher conference, I was able to draw the diagram of an electric bell on the blackboard. At the age of 13 I could already hear and give up to 30, albeit with some mistakes. Thus, my desire had matured more and more to become a radio operator later.
I was first confronted with amateur radio when a master watchmaker was discovered in our town because of his unauthorized radio communications with foreign amateur radio operators. Later I had the opportunity to visit his apartment and the hidden antenna system. He was arrested and was never seen again in our city. This incident has influenced me so much that I later always had the desire to acquire an amateur radio license. Unfortunately, the desire for a license as a result of the war did not come true immediately, but despite this event, I definitely wanted to be a radio operator.
I built myself a single circle with AF7 / AL4 and an AZ1 and a high antenna, which I attached with a wooden pole to our house gable. After school, I first made an apprenticeship with an electrician in Liebstadt. Already in the first year I became a district champion in the Reichsberufswettkampf and got a scholarship for the Shipbuilding-Ingenieur-Schule Elbing. After several theoretical courses in electrical engineering I was obliged to military service. At the muster for the Wehrmacht, I registered for the Kriegsmarine and was commanded because of my Morsekenntnisse to the marine communication school Aurich. After my 4-month training as a marine radio operator, I came on a minesweeper and with luck had survived the war.
After the war, I worked for a mine-disposal unit under English management. There I was responsible for the technical aspects of the radio station in Kiel. Gradually, former DASDers from Schleswig-Holstein as well as refugees and displaced persons from other parts of Germany came here again. That's what happened to me. Since my hometown was occupied, my family had been staying as an East German refugee with a farmer near Hamburg.
Already during the war I had met Kurt Schirmer, who already had a prewar license. Like me, he was a marine radio operator and a few years older than me. All interested in an amateur radio license had to pass an exam to obtain a new license and then got new call signs. Kurt Schirmer, with whom I became friends, got the call sign DL1GG and after the DARC was founded, he became district chairman of Schleswig-Holstein.
For me as a refugee from the East, first of all the purchase of bread was more important and I applied as a radio worker at the newly founded "Hochseefischerei GmbH" in Kiel. There I was able to prepare myself in the practical area for my later amateur radio license. A Windom antenna on ships developed by me at that time was very popular with the radio operators. With the beginning of my membership in the DARC / BZ I gradually had to get used to the requirements for the exam. My radio friend Kurt Schirmer, DL1GG, helped me a lot. My license was not long in coming and in 1952 I got the call sign DJ1PV.
Meanwhile, I had purchased my own property in Kiel-Ellerbeck and built a small house where I could also set up a lattice mast. A Fritzel FB 33 was mounted and tested various long wires. From now on call signs were collected and diplomas hung on the wall. With all the joy of the successes, but was my most pressing wish to once make a DXpedition in a distant land. I had to wait until 1996, though.
The years went into the country. I had meanwhile changed both professionally and privately.
My new employer also had a branch office or distribution center in the Philippines. During a stay there I got to know my xyl and since it was very close to make a DXpedition from there. But it was not that easy. Again, it should take me several years to get a guest license in DU.
After many efforts of our relatives, it was finally possible that I was granted a short-term license - but that's all I needed. In March 1996 it was finally time, I could go with DU / DJ1PV in the air. It was waited by many - mostly W stations - for me, because I had announced my action long before. But most of the stations worked were YES stations. It was a lot of fun and DJ1PV's popularity was pretty high afterwards. We chartered a motorboat and drove from one island to another, despite the adversities of the weather. But the W and JA stations were very wild on the still unknown islands, of which - it is said - the Philippines should have several thousand.
vy 73 it best DX de DJ1PV
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