2011/4/8 i8cvs domenico.i8cvs@tin.it
Just for curiosity. Was Yury Gagarin a licensed radio Ham and what his call letter ? Anybody had a QSO with him ?
I think K2UBC discussed this aspect here on amsat-bb some years ago and the outcome was "probably not", i.e. there is no proof Yuri G was UA1LO, which has been a common belief based some QSL with Gagarin's picture on QSL from UA1LO whose name happened to be Yuri as well.
Anyhow I had yesterday a QSO on HF with U5ARTEK, a clubstation whose page on qrz.com shows a picture of Yuri Gagarin operating from the same club station back in 1960's.
So Yuri has probably been at least a "2nd operator" ;)
Anyway there is plenty of anniversary stations on the air at least on HF (hopefully also on sats), at least the following:
R50YG "Yuri Gagarin" R50SK "Sergey Korolev" RG50D RG50K RG50F Star City training center RG50C Landing Site RG50G R1961G U5ARTEK/A R3K Energija Space Flight Control Center
73 de Ari OH3KAV Tampere, Finland (grid: KP11)