Naamloos document

When I was still a young boy I was interested in Electronics, Telegraphy, History (mainly about that what took place in Europe), Aviation, International Politics, a.s.o.
During the war and even before I was already very energetic. My father was a handy-man and he had put together a well working receiver. My mother was almost deaf and to be able to hear radiobroadcasts she needed headphones. These headphones enormously fascinated me and later these headphones were very useful during the reception of by the enemy forbidden transmissions of for instance BBC news.
After the war I joined the airforce of our Navy.
In the navy I got an education as a wireless operator. Already during my active service in several squadrons the navy made it possible for me to learn Russian and gave me an additional training in the reception of morsesignals of the Russians and even how to send those signals myself.
Back in the Netherlands after my travels abroad (Indonesia. Marocco, Great-Brittain, a.s.o.). I remained in the naval airforce for some years. Then I continued my study of the Russian llanguage and I also losed myself in radio-amateurism.
Very intensively I still followed the international developments, for instance during the cold war. Via the ether I could monitor the Radio- and Propaganda war between the East and even publish about this.
When I still was doing that what I wrote in item 6 I picked up Russian radio communications and found channels with stations which were involved in military rocket-tests. In that way I established a lot of shortwave frequencies, which later on also were used in Russian spaceflight operations.
During the Cuba crisis I could monitor the transport fleet of the Soviet Union via the shortwave shipping frequencies during the journey from the Ukraine to Cuba. Every 12 hours those ships with missiles and rockets on board gave their position to UFB (Odessa) and Moscow.
A long time before Sputnik-1 I almost every day monitored the soviet network for radarstations with the main- or leading station VIKA. After the launch of a missile for a long or middle distance VIKA told the stations that a missile was underway. The stations (with number call signs) reported their observations to VIKA.
Via shortwave frequencies I monitored as much as possible the unmanned satellites in the Kosmos-series.
I heard Sputnik-1 during the first pass within my range. Until the flight of Yuriy Gagarin I received a lot of satellites of the Soviet Union, but also western satellites.
After the flight of Gagarin we got the following manned ships as the Vostoks and Voskhods. Regretfully it was impossible for me to monitor all flights for I still had my work, but I heard many manned Vostoks and Voskhod and recorded that as much as possible. For instance the contact between cosmonaut Bykovskiy (Vostok-5) and Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchov in which Bykovskiy, still member of the komsomolets asked to get a full member of the communist party.
In 1965 I got another job and had to remove from the North to the West. The possibilities for a continuation of my study Russian were much better, but for a long time I could not do all with my hobby what had been possible in the North.
After my removal it was difficult for me to follow continuously all developments in space communications via the ether. I had my work, study Russian (partly even in a university), my family with children and also troubles, for instance often illnesses of my wife. What I always did was monitoring russian frequencies and also listening to the amateur satellites and decoding their transmissions with my BBC computer and I continued the observations of the cold war via the ether.
Very interesting times emerged: new russian satellites and ships, for instance the Soyuzy, stations like the Salyuts, Almazy and later on MIR.
In 1985 I was pensioned off and this made it better possible to cover all what happened. It also enabled me to travel for instance to Paris, America, Russia, Great-Brittain and also to the space tracking ships, during their visits to Rotterdam, Antwerp and Amsterdam.
Intensively I monitored the communications of the stations Salyuts, MIR. and the Soyuzy and Progresses.
What helped me a lot were the communications of the tracking ships via the shipping Frequencies in A-1 telegraphy. The ships also had often voice communication sessions with the spacestations.
A new era came for me when I was able to monitor the communications of MIR to and from TsUP Moscow via the geostationary satellites of the series Luch-1 (Altair-1 and 2). (1994-1998).
From the year 2000 a new situation emerged. With ISS the Russians on board got the possibility to communicate via the NASA-TDRS channels. This resulted in a sharp
decrease of the voice communications via the Russian VHF channels. The Russian VHF channels were (and are) always active during Soyuz ferry flights and during the combined ISS-STS periods.

This autobiography will continue by a series of paragraphs, which will consist of extensive and detailed descriptions of the subjects indicated in the synopsis. Related to the subjects appendixes with pictures and audiofiles will be added if these are applicable to those subjects.