WA4USN – AB4UG Radioblog

USS Yorktown (CV-10) Commissioning 80th Anniversary

USS Yorktown (CV-10) aircraft carrier at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum

The special event station to commemorate the Yorktown’s 80th anniversary went reasonably well. It was a nice day and good weather for operating on the ship. Ended up with a total of 5 other people joining me to run the station. Two of us were operating, and the others shared logging duties (two were new-ish hams and didn’t want to get on the air yet).

Ended up operating for just under 4 hours and got about 27 contacts in the log, all on 20m. Even had a bit of a pile-up going for a few minutes at one point.

Heard lots of POTA and Michigan QSO party stations while tuning around the band. It was an interesting day on 20m. The stations I heard and contacted were either super loud or really faint and hard to hear, without much in-between.

Even though we didn’t get as many contacts as I expected, it was still a fun day of operating. It’s been a while since I was last operating in the club room. I think I need to spend more time playing on the radio there.

Special Event: USS Yorktown (CV10) Commissioning 80th Anniversary

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the commissioning of the USS Yorktown (CV10). Like I did 5 years ago for the 75th anniversary, I’m planning to run a special event station from the club room (WA4USN) on the ship.

My current plan is to get started around 10AM or so, and operate probably until about 4 or 5PM. Activity will be on 10m, 20m, and 40m, depending on how the bands are behaving that day. We’ll also be listening on the 2m repeater.

Patriot’s Point will also be commemorating the occasion with reduced admission and events on the Yorktown throughout the day.

WA4USN QSL Card (Back) — WA4USN QSL Card (Front)

Field Day 2019

Didn’t get to spend as much time doing Field Day this year as I have in the past. Made it out to the Yorktown around 1PM and setup was still going on. Got the generator fueled up, plugged in the extension cord and we were ready to go.

Starting Field Day on the USS Yorktown. pic.twitter.com/9ltjUfkGHD
— WA4USN (@WA4USN) June 22, 2019

Listening for call signs

It looks like I’m logging a contact here, but I’m just trying to pick out the call sign of a station amid all the noise and other nearby stations.

Spent a few hours operating at the station. Started with phone, but got tired of listening to the noise after a while and switched over to RTTY. A lot less RTTY activity on 20 m and 40 m than I expected (that the radio could hear anyway) but managed a few contacts over an hour or so.

Wasn’t able to make it out on Sunday because of injuring my foot trying to navigate my way around the ship. Missed a step and when I landed on my foot, it bent in a way that it shouldn’t have. Nothing broken, fortunately, but really sore and made walking around difficult.

Turn out for this year’s Field Day was pretty light. Not sure how many people came out for the evening/night shift, but there were only a handful of people during the time I was there.

With club members getting up there in age, maybe it’s time to find an easier to access Field Day location.

Museum Ships Weekend 2019

This year’s Museum Ships Weekend was a lot of fun.

Started with the USS Yorktown (WA4USN) on Saturday. By the time I got to the ship, Tom/AJ4UQ had already racked up about 100 QSOs. Then he had to leave, so I had the radio all to myself for the next few hours. Spent a couple hours hunting ships on 20m and 40m to make sure we’d have enough to earn the certificate from NJ2BB (need 15 ships in the log). Then I found a clear frequency on 20m, parked and started calling. Didn’t take long for the pileup to happen, and added another 60 or so contacts to the log before I had to call it a day. Band conditions were decent with contacts from the northeast and across to Texas and Alabama. Some propagation up to the midwest as well.

Sunday we activated the USS Laffey (NT4HI) and the USS Clamagore (NJ4DU). Tom had the idea to alternate activating the Laffey and Clamagore about every hour or so, with him activating NT4HI while I activated NJ4DU. Seemed to work out pretty well. Working pileups can get tiring so being able to switch up periodically was helpful. We definitely had pileups going for both ships. Lots of fun. Lots of contacts from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas today. Also had some propagation up to the northeast and midwest again too. Had a few Wisconsin and Michigan stations in the log for both ships.

Ended up with close to 200 contacts for each ship today. Pretty good weekend on the air.

Field Day 2018

This year’s Field Day was a pretty good one.

Started off doing the first hour of Field Day at home running the radio off battery power. With the radio running 25-50 W, I racked up a few good contacts tuning around 10m, mostly from up and down the east coast.

Then it was off to the usual Field Day on the USS Yorktown with the club. This year we were operating with 2 stations plus a GOTA station that appeared to attract some interest.

The GOTA station was run on battery that was being charged by a solar panel, and also featured a couple of VHF go kits and some Morse code keyers to play with.

At the usual operating locations, people were busy making Field Day contacts. I spent about an hour at the phone station operating, but listening to the band chaos wore me out pretty quickly, so I switched over to logging for a bit.

Spent another hour operating Field Day from home on Sunday morning and was able to score a bunch more contacts fairly easily. Then it was back to the Yorktown to finish off the last couple hours of Field Day and then pack everything away.

At home, I ended up with about 25 contacts over the two hours I was operating. On the Yorktown, the club ended up with 582 contacts spread out over 4 bands and 4 modes. Pretty good this year. Maybe it was the sacrifice of AJ4UQ’s HT to the ocean that helped this year.

First sacrifice made to the ocean: @aj4uq‘s HT #hamradio #arrlfd2018

— imabug (@imabug) June 23, 2018

Finally dropped a ht over the rail into the harbor. Good thing it was a baofeng… #ARRLFD

— tom (@AJ4UQ) June 24, 2018

My first $30 Chinese radio, now fish food… https://t.co/UkdX0Fu3ww

— tom (@AJ4UQ) June 24, 2018

We were lucky enough to have a couple of CW operators who were going at a pretty steady pace both days. It was fun to watch them operating. Some day I hope to be there doing CW.