Ship's Radio Officer Antonio PACENZIA (Sicily, ITALY)
Born in 1954 in Siculiana, on the southwest coast of Sicily. I have always been a sea lover and the obvious choice for me was to join the Merchant Navy as a Ship’s Radio Officer.
Between 1969 and 1972 I attended the State Marine Radio Institute in Porto Empedocle, Sicily, and while there I obtained my amateur radio licence and my first call sign IT9PZF. Immediately after I attended the State Technical Institute for Electronics in Agrigento where I graduated two years later. Between 1974 and the end of 1976 I have served my twenty-month compulsary “National Service” by the Italian Navy.
As a newly promoted sergeant I started an eight-month period at the Electronic War Dpt. at ”Mariteleradar” by the Navy Academy in Livorno and then I served the remaining nine-month period at the Conference Hall of the “Nato Defense College” in Rome as a Sound Technician with the highest NATO Security Clearance (Cosmic Top Secret).
In 1978 I obtained the First Class International Certificate and a couple of weeks later I went off to work for the italian radio companies “Sirm” and “Telemar” being signed to various italian flag ships. Some months later I joined the VLCC Texaco South America/HPKG and then other Texaco tankers.
As I knew Paola for many years already, inevitably, I came to the decision to “divorce” from ships and in 1982 we married. That same year we moved to Grevenbroich, Germany, were she always lived with her Sicilian family. On my arrivel I applied for my german call-sign and soon after I was actively operating as DJ0DF.
Four years later (1986), Paola, our two-year-old daughter Sarah and I, moved to Siculiana, Sicily. In September of that same year I started teaching Marine Radio Communications at the very same State Marine Radio Institute in Porto Empedocle that I had attended in the 70′s.
Fully aware that Satellite Radiocommunications would inevitably have abolished all State Marine Radio Institutes, in 1992 I managed to re-qualify as a Class-Assistant Teacher and continued as a teacher in charge of menthally disabled students.
In September 2011 I celebrated my 25th year of State High School teaching. Now I enjoy watching ships sail by (I live at 1 km straight-line from the SW Sicilian beach) and refresh old memories of my career at sea while operating in the International Amateur Radio Service with the new call sign IT9RYH.
Friendly yours, Nino PACENZIA.
