Vlad has now showed up in Paraguay

which doesn't surprise me anymore.

So who is Vlad?

Vlad is the Third Most Interesting Man in the World.

The Most Interesting Man in the World sells beer on TV. Everybody know him.

Ever since I grew my beard back the guy on TV calls me when he wants a day off so I guess that makes me number two.

Vlad comes in at number three because he shows up more often than a bad penny in some of the most off-the-wall places in the world. He's a ham operator with the ability to get permission to go on the air from governments all over the world.

He's a Russian but never seems to be in Russia. He has a Russian call sign. When he is operating out of Russia he generally is told to use the host country's prefix followed by a slash and then his Russian call sign, UA4WHX.

Many parts of the world are hard to get in a ham's logbook. While, for example, there are a lot of Brazilian hams, there are only a couple of them in Bolivia. Most of them are not very active.

Enter Vlad. He got the OK to set up shop in Bolivia and went on the air and because of him I have a legitimate contact from Bolivia in my log. Same for South Shetland Islands and Egypt.

I just bagged him last night from Paraguay. He was running under the call sign ZP9/UA4WHX. ZP9 is the Paraguay prefix.

How he does this is beyond me. He just seems to pop up anywhere with no rhyme nor reason.

QSL with Vlad is a snap because he requires no QSL card from the receiving station. You simply send him a PayPal for the price of postage, note the contact details in the message box and wait for the mailman to show up.

Normally the procedure is you send the station a QSL card, a return envelope and a couple bucks for return postage and wait. When you add the $1.20 for the overseas stamp things add up pretty quickly. Sending Vlad a couple bucks via PayPal is actually a savings when you add everything up.

The QSL procedure is secondary over my curiosity about this man.

What I want to know is where he is going to show up next!










To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY