From mendicott@igc.org Wed Oct 30 14:00:27 1991
From: mendicott@igc.org (Marcus L. Endicott)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Date: 29 Oct 91 19:10 PST
Subject: Soviet Hams Rally Against Coup


There is a very interesting article entitled "Soviet Hams Rally Against Coup"
by Edward Kritsky {NT2X} (P.O.Box 715, Brooklyn, NY 11230 USA) in the November
1991 issue of QST.  (QST is the official monthly journal of the American Radio
Relay League, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111 USA.)  That issue also
contains sidebars on "Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg" by Robert S. Howe {K1MZB}
and "The 'White House' Operation" by Anton Rebezov {UA6YHP} and Dima Guskov
{UV3DCX}, from which the following are exerpted.
 
"On Monday, August 19, Andy Gromov, UA6XGL... agreed to begin transmitting the
decrees from his home station, and did so until his transceiver failed.  Then
an invitation came... to set up on the sixth floor of the White House."
 
"I installed my homemade transceiver and a 300-watt amplifier using a power
cord cut from a vacuum cleaner for interconnecting cables.  For cooling, we
set my amplifier on a garbage pail with a fan."
 
"RA3 came on the air at 2 AM Moscow time August 20... and began transmitting
the first of many decrees from Russian President Boris Yeltsin."
 
"The military soon began jamming us...."
 
"By Tuesday, August 20, some amateurs in Moscow had discovered the frequencies
being used by the putschists.  They began reporting... tank movements around
the city to the White House."
 
"Jamming of RA3 reminded us of the infamous Russian 'Woodpecker' (frequency-
sweeping, over-the-horizon radar).  To avoid this, RA3 moved frequency,
confusing the nonamateur jammer operators with ham jargon such as Q signals,
'Up five,' and so on."
 
"On the morning of August 20, two representatives of Moscow-Boston
International arrived: Yuri Brazhenko and Romeo Stepanenko.  They brought an
IC-726 to replace my homemade transceiver."
 
"RA3 was received all over the USSR, where amateurs taped our broadcasts for
delivery to local government officials and for the newspapers.  Foreign
embassies and the US Department of State also began tuning to RA3."
 
"Also on the 20th, station R3B was set up on the 20th floor of the White
House.  There... one of the popular homemade amateur... transceivers [was
modified] to transmit AM on the broadcast band....  This enabled citizens
throughout Moscow proper to receive Yeltsin's decrees on their table radios."
 
"Late on the 20th, the first attempt at a military assault on the White House
began, and we were terrified for our lives."
 
"The Amateur Radio operators at R3A/R3B were: UA1ZCU, UA6XGL, RW3DP, UV3DCX,
UA3DMC, UA6YHP, UV3ACQ, RA3AA, UA3AOC, UA3ANL, and UA9-163-075."