One of my friends from the photography meetup I’m in messaged me and asked if I’d be interested in an old radio he was helping a friend of his sell.
I’m now the owner of a Hammarlund HQ-100 receiver that powers on, but will need a fair bit of restoration work.
Hammarlund HQ-100
Hammarlund HQ-100
I even got a speaker to go with it.
Hammarlund HQ-100 speaker
It’s a bit of a heavy beast, but not quite as heavy as it looks. Undoing two screws let me slide the cover off to look inside.
Inside the Hammarlund HQ-100, top view
Inside the Hammarlund HQ-100, bottom view
There’s a fair bit of dust and corrosion on the components, but except for the band spread dial, all the controls seem to work. Not sure how the radio spent the last few decades of its life. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to replace a few components, especially the mechanical bits. Smells like the previous owner might have been a smoker, but it’s hard to really tell.
This is going to be a fun restoration project to work on. It’s going to take me a while, but I’m going to enjoy working on it.
This year was a pretty good one. I spent a little less time at the radios this year than in previous years, but it was still busy.
Started out with getting the radio at home set up on battery power (2 SLA batteries that had been pulled out of my UPSs) and getting the antenna mostly up in the air.
Antenna setup
Battery powered radio
I didn’t get to use the radio at home, but Connie was able to use it to make a contact Saturday evening. She started off at 5 W, but wasn’t able to break any pileups. After stepping up to a few different power levels, she was able to make a contact at 50 W, which the batteries apparently handled without complaint. The antenna setup is far from ideal, and I imagine most of the 50 W she had to use ended up warming up the sky overhead. But it still worked. Operating at reduced power is something we’ll have to work on.
The bulk of my Field Day was spent at the USS Yorktown. Once we got the operating positions set up, it was just a matter of waiting for the festivities to start at 1800UTC. We had our usual operating locations off the port side of the flight deck.
WA4USN operating locations
We also had a lot more visitors to our Field Day operation than in past years. The lady in charge of the overnight camping program at Patriots Point brought groups of Scouts and other campers by every now and then, so we got to show them a little bit about what amateur radio was about.
Our digital station was set up on a dipole mounted on the starboard side of the flight deck but it wasn’t performing very well, so it ended up getting replaced by a Butternut multi-band vertical that was stashed away in the club room. After some assembly, we got the dipole down and the vertical up and everything was performing beautifully.
Assembling the Butternut
Assembling the Butternut
New antenna in the air!
One of the things that makes doing Field Day from the Yorktown so great is the view. It’s pretty hard to beat.
Sunday morning, the alternate power source was pulled out of the club room and put to work.
Alternate power
Alternate power
It’s an old exercise bicycle with an alternator attached to the front wheel via a belt. It actually works well enough to power a radio. Unfortunately, the load on the alternator when the radio transmits makes you feel like you’ve suddenly hit a wall while pedaling and the radio shuts off because you’ve stopped pedaling. Entertaining, but not very effective.
Overall, another excellent and fun Field Day with CARS/WA4USN. I think next year I’ll try to do a bit more of Field Day from home.
Field Day is coming up in a few weeks! As usual, this year I’m planning on spending most of Field Day weekend down at the USS Yorktown playing radio as WA4USN.
In addition to that, at home I’m also going to set up the antenna on my temporary PVC mast and run the radio off a couple of lead acid batteries that I took out of some UPSs. I’ve made up a wiring harness that will let me connect the two batteries in parallel to the radio. I tested it earlier to make sure they would power the radio, but I haven’t tried transmitting with it yet. I figure the batteries should be good for operating at QRP levels for a couple hours. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a few contacts.
Had a blast playing radio in the NJ2BB Museum Ships Weekend event this weekend. I think this was the first time I’d done any significant radio since last year’s Field Day (I really need to get that antenna up in the air…).
This year two of the ships at Patriot’s Point were activated: the Yorktown (WA4USN) on Saturday and the Clamagore (NJ4DU) on Sunday.
Although there was a lot of QSB on 20m both days, there was still some decent propagation into the northeast, midwest and out west. Lots of contacts in the New York/New Jersey area, a bunch of contacts in California and Michigan/Illinois/Ohio. Texas was a big hot spot of contacts.
Unlike last year, we got some pretty good pileups going, and I was able to work on a pileup for a solid hour on Saturday before taking a break. I had a few other pileups going earlier, but that was the longest one I worked. When I left for the evening, I think we were up to just over 400 contacts for the day for WA4USN.
Sunday I wasn’t able to play radio for as long, but it was the first time I had operated as NJ4DU. Interesting little tidbit:the NJ4DU call sign is derived from the ship’s naval call sign, NJDU.
We got a few small pileups going on 20m before the band got too crowded. Took a bit of a break to look for some other ships, and then found a decently clear frequency to run again. Had a nice little pileup going before I had to call it quits for the day and let someone else take over.
Update: I received a correction for the date of the symposium. It will be on Wednesday June 14. RSVP by June 11.
Did you know there was a Lowcountry Contest Club? I didn’t know there was a Lowcountry Contest Club. Apparently they’ve been around a while.
Anyway, word came to me that they’re holding a Mesh Networking Symposium June 1014 at the Fleet Reserve Association in Goose Creek.
The Low Country Contest Club (LCCC) will be holding a symposium on MESH networks for amateur radio at the Wednesday, June 10, meeting of the LCCC at the Fleet Reserve Association in Goose Creek, SC at 1800. We generally arrive at 1800, order food/drink if desired at appx. 1830, and start the symposium shortly thereafter. Note that there is no “meeting,” just the symposium. Directions, etc. are at the bottom of this email.
Terry, N4TLF, and I have been working for some time on establishing a 2.4GHz link between our houses, so we could further investigate the use of MESH networks in amateur radio. We have finally managed to establish the link, and are currently working on ways to improve it, and also make the link available to others.
To make a MESH network really useful we need more participants. To that end we are inviting interested members of TARC and CARS to attend the June meeting of the LCCC, and will have (for lack of a better word) a symposium on MESH networks that will address
equipment, software, and problems involved in making a useful MESH network in the Charleston metropolitan area. We should have an example of a MESH network set up in the FRA building, and a demonstration of at least one possible application.
If you know of a ham that is interested please bring them with you. They do not have to be a member of any club; only interest is required!
This is a growing part of amateur radio. We think you will find it interesting, and hope that this will help to get a MESH network established here in the local area.
I assume they mean Saturday June 10 and that Wednesday is just a typo.
The symposium date is June 14. RSVP by June 11 if you want to attend.
Ham radio mesh networking is becoming a pretty popular thing these days with projects like Broadband Hamnet and AREDN using COTS wifi equipment and custom firmware. For hurricane and storm prone areas like the Lowcountry, having an infrastructure independent communication network based on a mesh network over the ham bands could be a very useful thing.
I’ll be out of town at Southeast Linuxfest when the symposium is happening, but if you’re interested in going, RSVP to W4MEL at <w4mel at arrl.org>
