Biography

[ VDNKh ROOFTOP STATION // MOSCOW, RUSSIA // GRID KO85 ]

UB3BIJ — ISKRA IMPULSE

> 5W QRP :: CW :: FT8 :: guerrilla_radio.exe running_


Who we are

We are a club of QRP enthusiasts — girls and boys transmitting straight from the heart of the capital. Our transceivers are hand-soldered on kitchen tables, our antennas are twenty metres of wire and a 49:1 transformer, and our operating positions are the rooftops of VDNKh: pavilions steeped in history, the park, buildings that remember 1939. Five watts, a piece of wire — and the whole world to work. We operate guerrilla-style: climb up quietly, deploy, work the pile, and dissolve into the Moscow twilight, leaving nothing behind but lines in other people's logbooks.

root@vdnkh-roof:~$ cat station.cfg
  RIG    = uSDX+ // 8-band SDR, DIY, biscuit-tin form factor
  PWR    = 5W (why use more when the ionosphere does the work)
  ANT    = EFHW 49:1, deployed in <7 min, exfil in <3
  MODES  = CW, FT8
  QTH    = rooftops above VDNKh, altitude: enough
root@vdnkh-roof:~$ ./tx --qrp --style=partisan &_

The place

VDNKh is the heart of the Motherland in miniature. Golden sheaves of the Friendship of Nations fountain, Mukhina's «Worker and Kolkhoz Woman» holding up the sky, the Vostok rocket aimed at the very same layers of the ionosphere that bounce our signals back to Earth. We transmit from the place where a country once put its dreams on display — and our dream is simple: five watts from Moscow, heard on the far side of the planet.

We remember whose grandchildren we are: Alexander Popov and his lightning detector; Ernst Krenkel — RAEM — hammering his key from a drifting ice floe; the young radio girls of the war years whose fists cut through jamming harder than steel. When our operator adjusts a curl under her headphones and takes the key, somewhere out in the ether it gets a couple of decibels warmer. 

Paper QSL is our religion

We collect paper QSL cards and always mail our club card back. An electronic confirmation is a row in a database; a paper card smells of post offices and stays forever. Don't be shy — send yours via bureau to UB3BIJ. No eQSL can carry a kiss.


Write to us! Heard us on the band? Want to confirm a QSO, talk homebrew QRP, or just say hello? All contacts are on our website ub3bij.ru — along with the logbook, the QSL wall and the rooftop journal. We are genuinely happy to make friends and exchange letters with radio amateurs all over the world — we answer everyone. One QSO with us and you're in our log — and in our hearts.


> PSE QSL :: TNX :: 73 & 88 de UB3BIJ ♥
Iskra Impulse // Moscow // KO85 // ub3bij.ru // connection never terminated_

Equipment

uSDX+ // 8-band SDR, DIY, biscuit-tin form factor 5w QRP