
A one-to-one call with his majesty (1999) - xur17
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/feb/11/features11.g22
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lb1lf
-When in university, I was a member of a radio club affiliated with the local Students' Society.

Lore had it a member had gotten in contact with JY1 once, and, much like the
ham in this article, assumed he hadn't got the call down correctly. -'Please
complete your call; I only got the prefix, over'

-'JY1 is my full call; name is Hussein, over'

-'How do you get a callsign like that, over?'

-'Being a king helps, over.'

~~~
myself248
I have a feeling OP submitted this after my comment mentioned him yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23151914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23151914)

I think everyone knows that story :) and we all wish it'd been us.

~~~
lb1lf
That we do. I never got a contact with Hussein, but did have the (surprising!)
pleasure to find out that the Argentinian ham obligingly swapping bands all
the way from 20m through 17, 15 and 12m to give me a couple of new band
countries as I got started on HF in 2002 was no other than former president
Carlos Menem.

Had no idea until the card arrived; on air, he’d described himself as a
retired official.

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gradschool
I was a member of the hang gliding club at Imperial College in London in the
early 90s. A member of our club, Yasmin Saudi, organized a hang gliding
expedition in Jordan involving a couple of lucky members (not me) and British
women's hang gliding champion Judy Leden. King Hussein kindly provided a
military escort and had a personal audience with the participants. He also
stayed in touch afterwards, and a year or so later when Yasmin was dying of
cancer he frequently called the hospital. He stayed friends with Judy Leden
and according to an interview of her whose source I can't remember he
sometimes visited the UK unofficially and dropped in for a cup of tea. Other
things I've heard about him are that he donated one of his official residences
for use as an orphanage and sometimes visited the kids to be supportive and
give them video games. I have a feeling he may have been one of the good guys
as world leaders go.

~~~
GreeniFi
Probably not the question you were expecting, but did you keep up your hang
gliding after Imperial?

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tobylane
Related, sorry if it’s not related enough, I’ve been unable to find the one
interview the Japanese emperor Hirohito did in 1975/7 with the American
journalist Bernard Krisher, Tokyo bureau chief for Newsweek Magazine from 1968
to 1980. It sounds like an interesting but mild meeting but very rarely
quoted.

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czzr
This is a charming story. There is a sad line from the hopeful early years of
the internet to today, from a royal ham operator to Trump’s twitter account.

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lihaciudaniel
I remember he was supposed to be the AntiChrist, well he doesn't seem like
one. Not a good guy either!

~~~
matt_morgan
Are you thinking of a different Hussein maybe? This one very often seemed like
he always did the best he could.

