Welcome to the Website of VA7VV, VE7ASS, VE7POO and VE7SPY (ex K2AXS, VE3FJI and VE7APE )

Biographical Sketch

Too many call letters you say, and too many V's in the call? Well that's what makes Canada a great nation -- everybody gets what they need. After rigorous psychological testing, Canadian call letters are assigned by the government to reflect the individual radio amateur's psychological test scores. Testing for general radio knowledge, regulations, and Morse code having been abandoned long ago as unfair and discriminatory, the test has been replaced by a personal interview followed by a one time cash payment.

The fellow on the left is Zeke. He is only masquerading as a dog; in reality he is VE7SPY. On the right, CW Jerome, VA7VV: defrocked priest, un-recovering alcoholic and substance abuser, womanizer, and head of the Marxist-Libertarian-Anarchist Party of British Columbia.

As a professional amateur radio operator, Jerome has been the recipient of the prestigious WAVZC  (Worked All Vancouver Zip Codes) award seven years running. He holds the Canadian record for sending the longest non-mechanical CQ without signing a callsign: 2 days, 4 hours, 8 minutes and 42 seconds, and presently holds the 40 meter distance record for 60 watt light bulb antenna work. His record of never having scored a single point in any recognized contest goes unchallenged to this day. He is a non-member of ARRL, CARF and FISTS and receives no publications relating to amateur radio through the mail or other media, nor has he ever. Jerome was the founder of VAPO, the Vancouver Ass'n of Pacquette Operators and serves today as 'President for Life'. During his watch, the dues paying membership has gone from around 150 in the 1990s to four paying members today. He has striven to rid the membership of those who would use radio instead of the internet.  The legendary results of this strategy speak for themselves: The Vancouver packet network of five BBS, mountain top repeaters and network nodes chatters away with itself and the world packet network through the internet and a few radio drops. Bulletins are forwarded flawlessly; FTP and Telnet services are available at each node not to mention the convers server. The high speed backbone is alive with ARP requests for TCP/IP stations whose owners have long since met their final rewards. All this without user intervention. That's right -- no users!. It's as if the neutron bomb hit, vapourised all the users, but the network lingers on. Now that is an example of robust network building and leadership by the President for Life!

From humble beginnings as an only child from a wealthy family to his meteoric rise to success on the world stage and in the military, and through to his retirement, amateur radio has given comfort and meaning to Jerome's otherwise empty life of success. You may be able to contact him in the still of the night on the 40 meter band  by listening very carefully for a Lake Erie 'swing' between 7.038 and 7.041, all filters in, as he calls CQ into his 60 watt light bulb.

Written in the third person on 09 June, 2004 by himself.