Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 26, 1995 TAG: 9507260019
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER
SOURCE: By RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Even a local call, you can try two or three times to get to the right point," she explained recently at the home of Dave and Gaynell Larsen, where she and her 9-year-old daughter, Julia, have been visiting.
"It's hard even in an emergency," she said in excellent English.
Getting through is only the first hurdle. Authorities with an attitude often try to see if it's a "real" emergency call before responding, which can take hours, she said. Sometimes, they never show up.
"They don't care," she said flatly.
Her experiences illustrate both the decrepit state of the telecommunications infrastructure in Ukraine - until a few years ago a part of the former Soviet Union - and the apathy that pervades officialdom there.
Dave Larsen can't do much about the attitude, but the nonprofit amateur radio organization he heads, the Foundation for Amateur International Radio Service, wants to help Ukrainian hams improve communications, especially for emergencies. Earlier this year, FAIRS got a U.S. Agency for International Development grant of almost $25,000 to do just that.
"The communication infrastructure is lots of years behind ours," said Larsen, who teaches chemistry at Virginia Tech and, with his wife, once ran the state's largest Christmas tree farm. Just sending a fax is a problem in the Ukraine, because the phone lines don't stay connected long enough, explained Larsen.
He and his wife, both experienced ham operators, have traveled extensively throughout Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere on FAIR's behalf.
On earlier visits, the Larsens carried several donated personal computers to the former Soviet Union as a first step in setting up an emergency radio communications network there using computerized communication modes.
That initial effort to bring the country into the computer age led to FAIRS.
Larsen and Goncharsky's husband, Victor - FAIRS' European director - wrote the nearly inch-thick proposal that landed the grant. The money will supply equipment for Ukrainian hams to build a state-of-the-art amateur radio digital communications network to link several Ukrainian cities with the rest of Eastern Europe, where telecommunications are more modern.
Victor Goncharsky, a ham and a trained engineer, will marshal the technical expertise from among the thousands of ham radio enthusiasts in his country to turn the plan into reality.
"The implementation is entirely up to the Ukrainians," said Larsen, who envisions a modern wireless communications network that will outstrip anything now in place in Ukraine and even will include a gateway to the Internet. Once set up, the network will permit digital and voice communications among amateurs from Lvov, where the Goncharskys live, to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
"It will allow thousands of hams in the Ukraine to use their capability in public service, emergency situations and general message traffic handling" on behalf of their neighbors, Dave Larsen explained.
Beyond that, the project will help train a local cadre of technicians skilled in digital communications techniques that will be available when the commercial sector catches up, or when foreign investors from countries like the United States demand telecommunications improvements.
Larsen has been working to procure the necessary equipment from various U.S. manufacturers, several of whom have given FAIRS a price break because of the project's humanitarian nature.
The foundation's basic goal is to develop good will through the "international personal networking" that FAIRS attempts to nurture via amateur radio, said Larsen, who hopes this project will attract others.
But it could have practical spin-off benefits in the long run, Larsen believes, especially for a country where people still line up to buy bread. He hopes the expertise the Ukrainians will gain through setting up the digital network will make them prime prospects for employment by U.S. and other companies that want to set up shop in the former Soviet Union.
"They're going to be hired before anybody else will," he predicted. "Maybe a job or two will fall out of it with an American company."
Meanwhile, people like the Goncharskys long for things to turn around in their homeland, hit by an economic slump in the years since the breakup of the Soviet Bloc, as it attempts to shift from a manufacturing economy driven by the military-industrial complex to one sparked by small entrepreneurs, commerce and light manufacturing.
Helen Goncharsky made a face when asked if she thought things have begun to get better in Ukraine. She still makes just $50 a month doing paperwork and translations in the International Department of Ulyanovsk Polytechnical Institute while her husband, unemployed, spends all of his time with the digital project, she said.
During their U.S. stay, she and Julia have taken advantage of at least two things Ukraine does not offer: Good dentists and Disney World.
the trip to Florida helping to ease the discomfort of treating Julia's four cavities.
|ALAN KIM/Staff
by CNB