Before the
first QSO.

Chapter 1

The hill

The station stands in the hills west of San José, 1 170 metres above the sea. West, past the ridges, the Pacific. East, past the volcanoes, the Caribbean. The country is narrow enough that a radio wave never has to choose.

The grid square is EJ79vw. Ten degrees north of the equator, the year keeps an even hand: near twelve hours of light and near twelve of dark, in every month. No daylight saving time; the clock says UTC minus six and never changes its mind. In September the sun rises around 05:26 and sets around 17:34, and each time it does, the greyline, that band of dawn and dusk where the low bands open to far places, passes over this roof. Twice a day. Every day.

I am Andrei, Andre to most people here, and I live on this hill with my family. The callsign I have asked for is TI2AVK: TI for Costa Rica, 2 for the San José zone, AVK for me.

Chapter 2

Sixty degrees north

Before the hill there was another latitude. I was born in Russia, and between twelve and fourteen I belonged to a youth section in St. Petersburg, a club circle for schoolchildren, with a name longer than any of us: long-distance, international and space radio communication.

They taught us from the ground up. Morse first, until the letters stopped being marks on paper and became rhythm. Then circuit boards, then the soldering iron, then out of the building altogether: a map, a compass, and a piece of ground to find your way across. Radio, it turned out, was also a way of knowing where you are.

St. Petersburg sits near sixty degrees north. In June the nights are white and never quite arrive; in winter the dark comes early and stays. Here, at ten degrees, the day keeps its even hand, and I notice the difference at every sunset.

Then came decades of other life. I will not fill them in here. They are not the story.

What I can say is this. I decided, simply, to go back to what gave me joy as a child. No grand reason. And I am very glad I did. Some things you put down at fourteen are still there when you reach for them.

Chapter 3

Two papers

If you come to this country to become a radio amateur, learn early that there are two papers, not one.

The first is the licence. It is issued for life and it is an identity document, the way a passport is. It says who you are. By itself it does not let you key a transmitter.

The second is the spectrum-use permit. It lasts five years, it can be renewed, and the renewal is filed six months before it runs out. That is the paper that lets you speak.

Both live inside one regulation with a long name: the Reglamento General para la Regulación de los Trámites del Servicio de Radioaficionados y Afines, Decreto Ejecutivo 40639-MICITT. Everyone says RGRR. Two institutions keep it: MICITT, the ministry, through its Vice-Ministry of Telecommunications, for the licences and the permits; SUTEL, the telecommunications superintendence, for the exam, the technical review and the callsign.

I hold neither paper yet. That is the whole shape of this story.

Chapter 4

The seventh of September

On 7 September 2026 I filed. Two forms, MICITT-ROBC-001 and MICITT-ROBC-002. A photograph. My residence ID. The coordinates of the station in WGS-84, decimal degrees, six places after the point, which is precise enough to put a pin on a roof.

The radio had not arrived, so I could not declare it. Instead I sent a written commitment: the equipment will be declared when it comes.

Nothing was printed. Everything was signed with Firma Digital, the Costa Rican digital signature, and sent. Filing this way is strangely quiet for such a large step. No stamp, no queue. One click, and a piece of your life goes off to the regulator.

Chapter 5

Four hundred and seventeen pages

The study book is the Manual del Radioaficionado de Costa Rica, version 3.0, August 2025, 417 pages. Chapter one is the law and procedure of this country. Chapters two to eight are a Spanish translation of the ARRL handbook material: electronics, propagation, antennas, operating practice, safety. The physics is the same in every language. Only the music changes.

I gave it a few weeks, cover to cover. The book and the exam are in Spanish, a language I learned as an adult; that is all there is to say about it.

Chapter 6

The nineteenth of September

SUTEL runs the exam online, under procedure RCS-264-2025. Seventy per cent passes. On 19 September 2026 I sat it.

Here is what they ask, and if you are studying, listen, because it is a kind of song.

What a superheterodyne receiver does. What a repeater offset is. Turn five watts into decibels above a milliwatt: 37 dBm. Who assigns the special callsigns for contests: SUTEL. What a Zener diode is for. How an FM detector works. What an antenna does. A frequency multiplier. How to make a distress call. That 3 dBi means twice the power. PACTOR and WINMOR, JT65 and FT8, IRLP and EchoLink: the digital and the linked. Simplex. Where to file a complaint about interference. Impedance matching. The Yagi. ATV against SSTV. That more than 100 milliamps through the body can set the heart fibrillating. Ohm, plain and old: 24 watts at 2 amps is 12 volts. The segment from 3.6 to 3.8 MHz. QRM. dBi against dBd. PTT against VOX.

I passed. An exam is a door, not a room. The room is still empty.

Chapter 7

The station on paper

That same day I sent the regulator the technical declaration of the station I had bought. A Yaesu FTX-1 Optima: 100 watts on HF and 50 MHz, 50 watts on VHF and UHF, all modes, tuner built in. A Yaesu ATAS-120A, a motor-tuned vertical, to stand on the roof eight metres above the ground. A 13.8 volt, 30 amp power supply. The manufacturers' specification sheets went with it.

None of it is here yet. It shipped earlier than the shop had promised and is in transit, through Miami; I will not write a date down, the carrier has not given me one. Until then the station exists on paper, which is a fair place for a station to begin. A second antenna, a Chelegance MC-750 on a ground spike, is for the field and the national parks. A radio should sometimes leave the house.

The list has since stopped being only paper. Two lines were added to it: a Comet CF-706A duplexer, so that HF and VHF/UHF can share one feed into the radio, and a magnetic mount for the ATAS-120A, because the parapet of this roof may not be drilled.

Chapter 8

Waiting, with the site on

What happens now is written in the RGRR, so I can tell you without guessing. SUTEL prepares a technical recommendation; the regulation gives it up to 45 working days. Then the Vice-Ministry decides; the regulation gives it up to 60. Then the callsign is written into the permit. Until that is done, no transmissions. None. The quiet line under the callsign on the front page, permit pending, is there for that reason.

I built the site while waiting. You arrive from deep space and fly toward the globe until it fills the screen. There is a greyline map centred on the station, the terminator crossing the hill twice a day. There is live solar weather, the beacons, the DX cluster, the satellites overhead. Click the callsign and you will hear it in CW; click the planet and it calls CQ DX. I am relearning Morse the way I first learned it as a boy, with the old Russian mnemonic words, where every letter has a word and the rhythm of the word is the code; the practice room is on this site too.

I am a member of the Radio Club de Costa Rica, TI0RC, founded in 1953, the IARU member society here. A good place for a beginner to stand quietly and learn.

Chapter 9

A file number

On 29 September 2026 MICITT sent me a file number. Before that my application was a letter somewhere in a mailbox. Now it is a file, and a file can be asked about.

I used to think the paperwork starts when you file. It starts when you get a number you can quote.

Chapter 10

The seventh of October

Two things happened on 7 October 2026, an hour apart.

In the morning I sent the serial numbers of the radio and the antenna. The rest, the SPA-1, the MC-750, the cables and the filters, have no serial numbers of their own, and I said so.

The radio was still on its way. The numbers came from the GigaParts invoice: the shop writes them down when it ships. So the papers were complete two weeks before the box arrived.

In the evening SUTEL wrote back: it is done with my file, its technical opinion has gone to MICITT, and from here on I deal with MICITT only.

That is the news. Two institutions were looking at my file. Now one is.

Chapter 11

One institution left

On 8 October MICITT confirmed that the opinion had arrived and gone into my file, and the same day asked its own department, DAER, for theirs. What is left is a chain inside one ministry: the DAER opinion, then a report from DNPT, then two signatures. The Acuerdo Ejecutivo for the spectrum permit goes through the Ministry of the Presidency; the resolution on the licence itself is signed by the Vice-Minister of Telecommunications. Then a notification, and the card.

Two papers at the end, not one, as chapter 3 said: the right to a frequency and the right to be called a radio amateur are different documents with different signatures.

The rule gives it 60 working days from 7 October, so the middle of January 2027. The outside limit, with extensions, is 180 working days from the filing on 7 September: about the start of June.

The callsign TI2AVK comes with the spectrum permit. MICITT gives it, not SUTEL. For now it is requested, nothing more.

There is no public list of callsigns in Costa Rica. The SUTEL site has the forms, the manual and the rules; the Registro Nacional de Telecomunicaciones knows concessions and operators, not amateurs. So nobody can look up whether TI2AVK is taken. I will find out from the Acuerdo, like everyone before me.

Chapter 12

The card

The QSL card was designed before the first contact, which is the right order. On it, a three-toed sloth with her baby hangs from a branch in Manuel Antonio. Beneath her: San José · Costa Rica · DXCC TI · ITU 11 · CQ 7.

Every contact will be answered. Through the bureau via TI0RC, direct, on LoTW, on eQSL. I do not know yet who will be first. I expect the first QSO late in 2026 or early in 2027.

Until then the greyline crosses the roof twice a day, the cluster scrolls, the beacons keep their schedule, and I keep mine: no key, no microphone, until the permit says so.

The log

Every entry, so far

A ham keeps a log. This is the log of the licence itself: the dates, the documents, the marks. It grows by one line when the permit arrives.

Basis: Reglamento General para la Regulación de los Trámites del Servicio de Radioaficionados y Afines, Decreto Ejecutivo N° 40639-MICITT, and SUTEL resolution RCS-264-2025. Written by the applicant, not by the regulator: the regulation and the decision of MICITT prevail over anything on this page.