Amateur Radio in Ukraine
I've mentioned before in other posts that my hobby is amateur radio. While amateur (or "ham" ) radio is officially banned in Ukraine (so we are told), an interesting thing happened to me. Last night I heard a station within the contested Donbas region near Donetsk asking for contacts. This station had an unusual callsign not consistent with typical amateur UKR callsigns nor issued or approved by the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union which co-ordinates such things. Speculation is it is issued by the provisional separatist government in Donbas. Tonight while operating I had another station, also within Donbas call me. This station had a typical UKR government approved callsign. As soon as we concluded contact another UKR station called me! This one was not within Donbas, but just immediately west of that region. He also had a standard issue government assigned callsign, recognizable by the prefix. Nope, I didn't contact the separatist station, nor was anyone else that I could detect. Not even Russians.
As you may well imagine, this had my head spinning a bit. The fact that there are hams operating within Donbas is amazing in itself. The fact of the callsign discrepancy within Donbas clearly shows there are civilians in close proximity with distinctly different allegiances, one to the separatist movement and the other to the UKR government. How touch and go daily life must be! Yikes!
Technically, I would like to clarify that these contacts are made in a digital, over-the-air mode and are not conversational. I have a computer interfaced to my radio and software with a special protocol. A bare minimum of info is exchanged, callsigns, an approximate location and signal quality report. No asking "How's the war coming along, Vlad?" It would be nice if it were more personal, but under the circumstances I think this is terrific. Sometimes this hobby literally puts one on the front lines. Wow.
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Do keep us posted on further contacts!!
it was during the peak of a very good sunspot cycle and we had world-wide communications on the amateur HF bands for many hours a day. After the old Soviet Union broke up it was like all the chains fell off the Russian ham operators and for a while they were all over the bands and you couldn't shut them up! 
They went from call, and signal report only to descriptions of their equipment, the weather, and regular rag-chews. It was like they were so happy that they were finally allowed to really talk to us.
There were a couple of weeks in 1990 or 91 when the 10 meter band was open world-wide for most of the day. My dad and I used to chat on 10 meter SSB when I was on my 1.5 hour commute home from work each day. (I was in Calif., he was in Chicago.) One day a ham named Boris in Moscow jumped into our chat and we talked for over an hour. He joined us almost every day for about two weeks before we lost band conditions and never heard from him again. Interestingly, I was then working in an intel related job and with a security clearance that required that I notify my Special Security Officer of all foreign contacts, including that one. I did and he freaked out but couldn't tell me to stop. He cautioned me not to reveal any classified info (Duh?) and that there would probably be "others" monitoring the conversation. I thought that was pretty funny at the time, maybe not so much now.
Anyway, you just got me reminiscing about the old days and a really good sunspot cycle. I'll quit now. 
73
Although CW (Morse code for the non-hams here) is still my favorite. I have two K2s and a K3 for low power (QRP). Main radios are Kenwood. 73
PS: 73 is ham jargon for "Best Regards." Many abbreviations became convention when Morse code was the only mode of communications and hams sought brevity where ever possible. I know you know this, but lots of non-hams and even those who have never heard of amateur radio these days abound here! 
< me listening to the ham bands!
And welcome to DU!
Keep us posted.
