Good morning lock Evergem, this is Vereeniging Papa Golf 1234

 Well I've finally done it! Some of you may recall I took my VHF radio exam in December so that I could register the portable VHF radio I bought for Vereeniging.

Of course, I was thrilled to pass the exam, but the real test was the one that followed. How could I get my handheld radio registered for my beloved barge? When I say that these things are organised and regulated by national authorities, you will, I think, understand that these institutions' purpose in life is not to make things simple. 

The thing was, I received my 'certificate' for passing the exam. Actually, certificate is a bit of a misnomer as it's a plastic card like all the others we have in our wallets and much like my driving license. Anyway, that told me my qualification had been officially recognised; at least, so I thought. However, on logging in to the relevant government website to register my VHF, I received a message that I couldn't do so without a certificate and it appeared that the fact I'd passed the exam wasn't yet on the system. Okay, I thought, I can wait, but in the meantime I wrote an email to the relevant body, the RDI (Rijksinspectie Digitale Infastructuur), to ask the how long it would take.

I have to say they were very quick. A nice person from their office wrote to me to say that if I wanted to register a VHF radio, I'd need a permit. She also sent me the link to where I could read about it. Well, that totally rocked me. I thought I had the permit I needed by passing the exam. What now? 

By this time, it was just before the Christmas holiday and after trying unsuccessfully to decipher the complicated language in which the site was written (usual governmental gobbledegook, but even more obtuse in Dutch), I decided to give it a rest until the new year. After all, I wasn't going anywhere by boat, was I? Not in the frigid weather we were having. And anyway, we were in France, far away from my beloved Vereeniging.

On our return to the Flatlands, I received a second email from the lady at the ministry. She admitted with effusive apologies that she'd made a mistake and I didn't need a permit after all. I just had to register my VHF in the normal way. Naturally, I thanked her but was still a bit mystified, since when I'd first applied, you might remember I wasn't allowed to complete the online form due to my lack of certificate.

Thankfully, the RDI seemed to have recovered from their holiday hiccoughs and I was able to complete my details without any further stern messages. But that wasn't the end of it. I still had to wait for my registration to be official before I could set the VHF device up.

Then, at last, a few days ago I received the letter and yet another card with all the details: the ATIS code (a special number that identifies my device precisely) and my call sign, which is the one beginning Papa Golf (or PG1234, which is not exactly it but you get the idea). 

The nerve-wracking part of it was that I now had to programme the radio with the code and be extremely careful not to make a mistake. The documentation said that if I got it wrong, I'd have to send the device back to the distributor or manufacturer to have the mistake corrected. Gulp!

So... I enlisted Koos's help and together we sat down and went through the process step by step. It took us a while and lots of checking, re-reading and repeating but eventually it was done.

I can't tell you how chuffed I am now to have Vereeniging's own VHF and her own call sign. That makes all those weeks of studying worthwhile and I can't wait to get out on the water again and use it.

And that's it for this blog. Till next time allemaal. I hope you all have a good weekending and I'll fill you in on all the other news and updates later.