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ZL2AOH VK2CCK

name : Del Clouser
QTH   : Orlando, FL, USA

There had been many foreign hams here in Korea as HL9 prefix until early 1990s. However we can't hear HL9 calls so often thesedays even on the Far East Asian Network which is a weekly radio meeting among hams working in the army, air force and navy around Far East Asia.

Del worked for American company, Lockheed Martin Corporation in Wonju, Korea. He really liked Korea and Korean people so he wanted to work here in Korea.  Using HL9 prefix might be another reason.

He loves CW very much. Eventhough he has been enjoying ham radio for about 40 years, he just have had less than 100 QSOs on voice communication.  I also had first QSO with him on 40m CW.

I was using OMNI-V at that time, and yet I couldn't figure out one of the radio's functions.  Del's was the same radio so I asked him to move up to the phone band however he told he couldn't because he couldn't find a microphone for the voice communication.  When I visited his radio shack, I saw it was true.

There was a funny story  when he set  up his radio station at the apartment house. As soon as he moved to the apartment house, he started to arrange the radio and antenna.  Del put up a beam antenna on the roof of the building where he lived.  One day, in a very early morning, an old man went up to the roof where is flat and good for a small exercise. All of a sudden, the man heard a strange noise from the other corner of the building and also found something flashing in the air.  He was really frightened and almost fell into a swoon.

Can you guess what happened?  Del was alone here in Korea.  His family didn't come together so he used to be up late to enjoy the radio.  He was just turning the antenna.  The rotor on the roof made a noise and the antenna itself reflected the light. An old man might have thought those were a kind of ghost or something because he didn't know the antenna was newly built.  After all Del dismantled the antenna and moved his radio stuff to the work place.

Del retired in 1996 and now he is living with his family in Florida, still enjoying CW.
I hope to hear his beautiful morse code again on the radio.

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