Amateur Radio: the first social network

Long before Twitter and Facebook, amateur radio community shared their virtual lives.

Age 60, Alv Våge received notification that the Government of Norway as retiring from his job of lighthouse keeper and knew he had a problem. His return to the city did nothing but confirm. The floor that was installed did not meet the conditions necessary to place a ham radio antenna and direct dealing with people, after so many years of loneliness, it was somewhat violent. So it was that volunteered to being assigned a beacon -any Faro- in a place that was secluded enough without even aspire to receive a salary in return. All he wanted was to return to the quiet of their confinement to keep in touch with the only people who had been his real family: his friends from the radio.

The ALV Våge is one of the many stories that the director-and radioaficionado- Allan Batievsky included in the documentary Hello Stranger Perfect beginning to roll these days in Barcelona, and that will take you to travel the world in search of testimonies of the members of this tribe. Many years before anyone dreamed of something like Facebook was already a virtual community that exchanged impressions of life and the world through the first social network that on record.
Our first mission is to serve the community, explains Batievsky. That’s why our bulky allow us to place antennas and we give in the electromagnetic spectrum that we use because, when all else fails communication, radio is the only one that remains operational. As an example consider the time that he managed to unite a father with his daughter during the earthquake in Nepal in April 2015. An Israeli radio amateur named Ammir Bazak was established in chief of the emergency operation and Batievsky it became part of bridge connecting North America with Asia. It happened that a citizen of the State of Virginia had her daughter in the affected area and contacted Batievsky, who in turn contacted Bazak to try to determine the whereabouts of the girl. After a few hours, Batievsky was informed that she was safe in one of the stations of the Red Cross, that the next day would be evacuated to India and from there planned to take a flight back home . The shouts of joy were heard from the other side of the line when Batievsky broke the news to the family constitute one of the fondest memories of his record as amateur radio.

Public service is not, however, the main use radio amateurs give their teams. Most of the time is spent establishing contacts with the most random unknown and distant corners of the globe. It is such an absorbing activity that families should muzzle it as you restrict the hours of television a child. Where lies the power of attraction so irresistible? That is precisely what I intend to find out, says Batievsky. On one side is the technical question, the desire to get as far as possible using the least power, but I think the coach is basically an excuse. It is probably something much simpler: the indescribable pleasure to go to a stranger and say, “Hello, stranger, I’m here, tell me about your life.”

*google translate

Source and original in Spanish