March 13, 2019, by Radio Club de Chile

There are only a few times in life when radio amateurs have an opportunity to be truly helpful to someone, but when it comes, we embrace it avidly and put all our effort so that our experience and skills can benefit those that really need them; that is the spirit that moves and encourages us, which we try to instill in the new generations.

Allow us to introduce Don Martin; he is a settler that lives south of Cochrane (Lake Vargas), an idyllic albeit completely isolated location. Don has a small government-issued radio that allows him to communicate with Cochrane and with his “neighbors”; he uses it to somehow break that isolation. However, one day the radio broke and Don was no longer able to communicate through it.

An acquaintance of Don learned about this and thought that maybe the radio amateurs could help. He called Radio Club de Chile it was a difficult task, knowing what was wrong, making a diagnosis from so far away However, a communications bridge could be established and after questions and answers were exchanged back and forth, we were able to diagnose the fault and provided instructions on how to solve it.

Last night, Don was able to reestablish communication with Cochrane and is happy and thankful to all those that participated, and we are more than happy that we were able to serve and proud to be radio amateurs!

Also available in Español (Spanish).