| Early Radio Amateur Activities in Malaya | | | |
Amateur radio, the scientific hobby that brings together enthusiasts in many parts of the world, irrespective of race, creed, or social standing, was first introduced into Malaya in the late 1920s.
Amongst the early pioneers was R.E. Earle, VS1AB, who was active during 1928 to 1930. At that time, overseas transmissions were scarce and irregular. Also the late G.M. Salt, VS2AF, who commenced in 1930 from Glenmarie Estate, Batu Tiga, Selangor, and the late T.G. Laver, VS2AC, from Masai, Johor. The late A.N. Randall, VS3AB, operated from Johor Bahru. Reg. Hollis-Bee of the Public Works Department operated as VS2AG from Kuala Kangsar, Perak. During 1932, VS2AF and VS2AB operated successfully on 56 MHz over a distance of 10 miles.
E.C. Yates, VS1AD, was operating on the 20 and 40 meter bands in between 1920 and 1930 on Phone and CW (continuous wave). During 1930, he obtained permission from the Posts and Telegraphs to opera a broadcast service on 42 meters. Programs were broadcasted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings from 6 pm to 8 pm, and on Sunday mornings from 11 am to 1:30 pm. In 1932, he relayed the dance music from the Adelphi Roof Garden on the occasion of the Annual Ball of the Singapore Amateur Radio Society. These transmissions were well received throughout Malaya. In November 1933, the Posts and Telegraphs granted a license under the call of 2HI in the 49 meter band, and the broadcasts were concluded on the 42 meter band.
Jim Macintosh, VS2AA, came on the air during January 1934. Using only 5 watts, he established two-way working with five out of the six continents on 40 meters CW during his first month. The missing continent was South America, which is still a difficult continent to contact. Before the year was out, never using more than 20 watts, he had his WAC (Worked All Continents), and WBE (Worked all British Empire). The first WAC for Malaya was made by A.N. Randall, VS3AB.
In the early days, communication was restricted to CW. But today, Malaysian amateurs, perhaps better known as hams, can be heard in most evenings on 15 and 20 meter bands conversing on phone with other hams in Australia, north America, Europe, Africa, and occasionally with the extreme ends of the earth, eg. Virgin Islands.
For local contacts between amateurs in Malaysia, the 40 meter band is the most popular. And there has been a regular Sunday morning phone net for several years. It usually ets going at around 9:30 am, and sometimes lasts into the early afternoon.
Since the World War II, groups keen amateurs have formed societies to promote their interests, and lend a helping hand to the beginners. The Perak Radio Society and Selangor Radio Society were formed in 1947, whilst the Malayan Amateur Radio Transmitters’ Society was registered in 1952. The latter’s chief function being to act as a central bureau for both inward and outward QSL cards (confirmation of contact) between the Malayan stations and amateurs situated overseas.
The Selangor Radio Society was the result of the untiring efforts of the first president, Jim Macintosh, VS2AA, Law Joo Ghin, VS2AO, N.L. Narayan, VS2CN, N.A.K. Nair, Au Yong Siew Thong, and Rodgers Rowe.
The Singapore Amateur Radio Transmitting Society was founded in 1949. Amongst these who attended the inaugural meeting were Ted Yates, VS1AD, Reg Hollis-Bee, VS1AG, Mike de Cruz, VS1DU, Charles Salton, VS1DV, Ken de Souza, VS1CZ, and John Osborne, VS1BO.
The tendency had been for the Malaysian Amateur Radio Transmitters’ Society (MARTS) founded in 1952, to expand at the expense of the local societies with the result that the smaller societies have been wounded up. The service provided to members will then be always up to the standard envisaged by its founders.
MARTS – How it started
After the winding up of the numerous amateur radio societies in Malaya at that time, the hams started to consolidate and looked toward a central body to serve and looked after their interests. The founding of MARTS was the work of the following hams, who remained in office for many years after is formation: Eu Khuan Kew, VS2BS, J.E. Hemphil, VS2CR, S.A. Faulkner, VS2DB, and C.E. Salton, VS2DV. Call sign prefixes used then were VS1 for Singapore, VS2 for Malaya Federated States, VS3 for Malaya Non-Federated States, VS4 for Sarawak, VS5 for Brunei, and ZC5 for British North Borneo.
Full membership was opened to radio amateurs in the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, British North Borneo, Brunei, Sarawak, and Christmas Island. Total membership was less than 100 members, and the society’s registered address was PO Box 600 in Penang.
Radio communication was confined only to the HF bands using the AM and CW modes only. After the Emergency period, the VHF band was opened to the hams. And from then on the introduction of repeaters came about, after VHF FM amateur radio communication gaining popularity among the members. In 1975, The first VHF repeater, 9M2RUK, was installed by MARTS on Gunung Ulu Kali in Genting Highlands for covering the Klang Valley, and its surroundings. Subsequently it was followed by the setting up of the 9M2RBB repeater on Penang Hill in 1984, Gunung Ledang repeater 9M2RGL, Kuala Lumpur’s 9M2RKK and 9M2RKL also followed suit. In 1989, the Gunung Pulai repeater 9M2RGP was put up, and one year later te Kangar repeater 9M2RMK was installed.
The Repeater Linking Project
Repeaters do a good job of increasing radio communication coverage. And since then, they have been providing useful services to its members, and during times of emergencies. Since their first installation in 1975, these repeaters only served the local coverage area. If any hams wanted to talk to other hams in other states using this mode, they would have met with disappointment. The thought of being able to use the walkie-talkie for a ham lives in Penang to talk to another ham lives in Johor or Malacca with just the press of the PTT (push to talk) has always been a dream. The reality that confronts MARTS to put up such a system was beyond the financial means and resources at hand.
In 2005, a task group was finally put together by MARTS to look into the possibility to link up the many repeaters situated in the various states. The need to have a complete radio communication coverage in peninsular Malaysia was further spurred after the tsunami in 2005. MARTS felt obligated to serve the community in imes of emergency and disaster. By having radio communication coverage during these times, much help can be rendered toward to the support, health, and rescue agencies.
MARTS is a society that welcomes all hams to be members. It does so without any discrimination toward race, creed or religion. Being an open society, it is very fortunate to have in its membership many employees of Motorola, who have come forward to give support and help toward this project to link up the repeaters. Having professionals in various fields of engineering as its members, MARTS was able to obtain technical formation from these people to form a working paper for the implementation of this project. Support in the form of technical expertise and equipment made the project a reality. Extra repeaters were installed on Bukit Bendera in Penang, Gunung Berincang in Cameron Highlands, Gunung Ulu Kali in Genting Highlands, Gunung Ledang in northern Johor, and Gunung Pulai in southern Johor. For safety and security reasons the repeaters were all installed at Telekom Malaysia hill station towers and buildings.
Today, we have the completed task: ability to QSO (contact) from the north of peninsula Malaysia in Perlis till Johor Bahru in the south.
Written in October 2006 by Bob Chee, 9M2CL
Historical data by Ismail "Eishee" Razak, 9M2FK
-73 de 9w2azx-
The following is an article written by Steven Krauss a.k.a. Dr Abdul Lateef Abdullah who studied Seni Silat Gayong from guru Sulaiman Shariff in the USA. I had the opportunity to interview him for the SENI BELADIRI magazine several years ago where he talked about his reversion to Islam via silat. He has since married a Malaysian and furthered his studies in a local university. In this article he wrote personally, Dr Abdul Lateef elaborates on his experiences in silat and his journey to Islam.
My experience in Islam began as a graduate student in New York City in 1998. Up to that point in my life, for 25 years, I had been a Protestant Christian, but had not been practicing my religion for quite some time. I was more interested in “spirituality” and looking for anything that didn’t have to do with organized religion. To me, Christianity was out of touch and not relevant to the times. It was hard for me to find anything in it that I could apply to my everyday life.
This disillusion with Christianity led me to shun everything that claimed to be organized religion, due to my assumption that they were all pretty much the same, or at least in terms of their lack of relevance and usefulness.
Much of my frustration with Christianity stemmed from its lack of knowledge and guidance around the nature of God, and the individual’s relationship to Him. To me, the Christian philosophy depends on this rather bizarre intermediary relationship that we are supposed to have with Jesus, who on one hand was a man, but was also divine.
For me, this difficult and very vague relationship with our Creator left me searching for something that could provide me with a better understanding of God, and our relationship to Him.
Why couldn’t I just pray directly to God? Why did I have to begin and end every prayer with “in the name of Jesus Christ?” How can an eternal, omnipotent Creator and Sustainer also take the form of a man? Why would He need to? These were just a few of the questions that I could not resolve and come to terms with. Thus, I was hungry for a more straightforward and lucid approach to religion that could provide my life with true guidance, not just dogma that was void of knowledge based in reason.
While in graduate school, I had a Jewish roommate who was a student of the martial arts. While I was living with him, he was studying an art called silat, a traditional Malaysian martial art that is based on the teachings of Islam. When my roommate would come home from his silat classes, he would tell me all about the uniqueness of silat and its rich spiritual dimension.
As I was quite interested in learning martial arts at the time, I was intrigued by what I had heard, and decided to accompany my roommate to class one Saturday morning. Although I did not realise it at the time, my experience in Islam was beginning that morning at my first silat class in New York City back on February 28th, 1998.
There, I met my teacher, Cikgu Sulaiman, the man who would first orient me to the religion of Islam. Although I thought I was beginning a career as a martial artist, that day back in 1998 actually represented my first step toward becoming Muslim.
From the very beginning, I was intrigued by silat and Islam and began spending as much time as possible with my teacher. As my roommate and I were equally passionate about silat, we would go to my teacher’s house and soak up as much knowledge as we could from him. In fact, upon our completing graduate school in the spring of 1998, upon his invitation, we spent the entire summer living with him and his wife. As my learning in silat increased, so did my learning about Islam, a religion that I had hardly any knowledge of prior to my experience in silat.
What made my orientation to Islam so powerful was that as I was learning about it, I was also living it. Because I studied at the home of my teacher, being in the presence of devout Muslims allowed me to be constantly surrounded by the sounds, sights and practices of Islam. For as Islam is an entire lifestyle, when you are in an Islamic environment, you cannot separate it out from everyday life.
Unlike Christianity, which lends toward a separation between daily life and religion, Islam requires its followers to integrate worship of Allah into everything we do. Thus, in living with my teacher, I was immersed in the Islamic deen (lifestyle) and experiencing first-hand how it can shape one’s entire way of life.
Since Islam is focused on the most healthy, positive way of conducting our lives in every setting, then it is, and always will be, the only real answer to any society’s social dilemmas.
In the beginning, Islam was very different and powerful to me. It was also very foreign in many ways and the amount of discipline it requires was difficult to understand. At the time, I was liberal in many ways, and was used to shunning anything dogmatic or imposed, regardless of where it came from!
As time went on, however, and my understanding of Islam grew, I began to slowly see that what seemed to be religious dogma was really a lifestyle put forth to us by our Creator. This lifestyle, I would later learn, is the straight path to true contentment, not just the sensual and superficial way of life that my society and culture promote. I realised that the question is quite simple actually. Who could possibly know better what the best way of life is for human beings than the all-wise Creator?
From that first silat class in New York City to the day I took my shahadah, July 30, 1999, I had undergone a thorough self-examination that was comprised of two major processes. One was to question the culture of the society I was brought up in, and the second was to question the role I wanted religion to play in my everyday life. As for my culture, this one was not as difficult as most people would think.
American culture is highly influential on how we see life because it constantly bombards us with sensual gratification aimed at appealing to our worldly desires. In America, happiness is defined by what we have and consume, thus, the entire culture is geared toward the marketplace.
Unless we are removed from this type environment, it is difficult to see its drawbacks, which are based on worshipping and putting faith in everything but God, the only One that can provide us with real, lasting contentment in our lives.
Being a social scientist by trade, much of my professional time is spent trying to address the social ills of our society. As I learned more about Islam, I came to the conclusion that many societal ills are based on unhealthy social behavior. Since Islam is a lifestyle focused totally on the most healthy, positive way of conducting our lives in every setting, then it is, and will always be, the only real answer to any society’s social dilemmas.
With this realisation, not only did I decide that Islam was relevant to my everyday life, but I began to understand why it is so different from other religions. Only Islam provides knowledge and guidance for every aspect of life.
Only Islam provides a way to achieve health and happiness in every dimension of life—physical, spiritual, mental, financial, etc. Only Islam provides us with a clear life goal and purpose. And only Islam shows us the proper way to live in and contribute to a community. Islam is what everyone needs, and what so many who have not found it yet, are searching for. It is the path to purpose, meaning, health and happiness. This is because it is the straight path to the source of truth and real power—Allah.
It was only until I actually became Muslim that I realised just how encompassing the Islamic lifestyle is. Literally everything we do has one underlying purpose – to remember Allah. The lifestyle provides us with the way—not just the understanding—but an actual method of constantly remembering our Creator in as simple an act as greeting someone, or getting dressed in the morning, or waking up from sleep.
Islam shows us that by remembering Allah, everything we do becomes focused on Him, and thus becomes an act of worship. From this, our energy, our thoughts, and our actions all become redirected away from unhealthy and useless causes and focused on the source of all goodness.
Thus, we are continuously tapping into His divine strength, mercy and grace. So, by remembering Allah constantly, we become stronger and healthier in every aspect of our lives and not distracted by self-defeating thoughts and behaviors.
There still remain some minor aspects of Islam that have proven to be somewhat difficult adjustments for me. Nevertheless, I thank Allah everyday for the ease to which he has allowed me to make the necessary changes in my life so that I can continue to live in America and still be, Insha-Allah, a good Muslim. As a white, middle-class American, many cultural aspects of Islam are quite different from the way in which I grew up.
In fact, when I finally broke the news to my family that I had become Muslim, almost all of their questions and concerns were related to cultural differences—marriage, social life, family, etc. They were much less concerned about my general beliefs about God and religious practice. For my family, friends, and co-workers, becoming Muslim was not seen necessarily as a negative change, but it has required a great deal of education about Islam.
Because acquiring knowledge is a critical component to a Muslim’s development, having a teacher who has taught me how to apply Islam in everyday life has made all the difference in managing whatever difficulties I have experienced from my reversion. Having someone knowledgeable you can turn to whenever you have questions is a wonderful support that every new revert should go out of their way to find. Islam is not a religion that can be rationalized, in the way that Christianity and Judaism are. It is a clear path that must be followed just as Allah has laid out for us through the Qur’an and the lives of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAW), his companions, and the saints of Islam.
In this day and age, in this society, discerning the path can often be difficult, especially when we are constantly faced with questions and doubts from people who on the surface may not be hostile to Islam, but whose general lack of faith can have a harmful effect on someone who bases everything they do on their love for Allah. It is also not easy being in an environment where we are constantly bombarded with sensual temptations that are seen as ordinary, common aspects of everyday life.
But when we have the support of a knowledgeable, experienced teacher, who is able to apply the universal teachings of Islam to his life, then the truth becomes clear from error, exactly how Allah (SWT) describes in the Qur’an. From this, we are able to understand how to apply Islam correctly to our own lives, and Insha-Allah, receive Allah’s many blessings. The ultimate test, however, of anyone who claims to have true and right knowledge, is to look at how they apply it in their own lives. If their actions support their teachings, then and only then should we look to them for guidance.
My journey to Islam has been a life-altering experience. It is one that with every passing day makes me more and more appreciative and thankful to Almighty Allah. The extent of His mercy can only fully be understood from the perspective of a Muslim—one who prostrates regularly and submits their will to that of the Creator.
I look back at my life prior to Islam and reflect on the different ways I sought guidance. I think back to all the different ideas I once had of who God really is, and how we can become close to Him. I look back now with a smile and perhaps even a tear because now I know the truth.
Through Islam, I know why so many people who do not believe have so much fear inside them. Life can be very scary without God. I know, because I once harbored that same level of fear. Now, however, I have the ultimate “self-help” program. It’s the self-help program without the self. It’s the path that puts everything is in its proper place. Now, life makes sense. Now, life is order. Now, I know why I am here, where I want to go, what I want my life to be, how I want to live, and what is most important not just to me, but to everyone. I only hope and pray that others who have not found the path yet, can feel the same that I do..jpg)
