B-17 "City of Savannah" Update

The B-17 restoration project is moving along nicely.  The floor in the radio compartment is now installed and the spare transmitter tuners are installed on the right side aft bulkhead.  I was at the museum yesterday to meet with Richard, the project manager to discuss our electrical requirements for the compartment.  We'll have our own distribution point in the compartment for 110vac and they will be installing a 28vdc power supply for us to run our radio gear.  We'll also install a 12vdc supply to run an amateur radio transciever.  Things are coming along nicely. 

It really is a privelege for the local amateur radio community to be involved in this historic project!

Follow the project at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum website:
http://www.mightyeighth.org/b17_restoration.htm

2010 Skywarn Recognition Day

On Saturday morning, Dec 4th a group of HAMs from Savannah made the trip up to the National Weather Service in Charleston, SC to operate the WX4CHS radio station for the annual Skywarn Recognition Day event.  The team consisted of Steve-K4SDJ, Mac-KF4LMT, Peter-KJ4FAW, and Dan-KF4MND.  I was not able to make the trip and stayed behind in Savannah to coordinate activities on this end.  The team arrived just before 1100 and wasted no time getting things setup to operate for thier four hour shift.  Dan set up an Echolink node and tested to the W4SGA node on the 146.970 repeater in Savannah.  Dan also set up a live video feed via Ustream so that anyone could watch the activities there at the NWS via the Internet.

Mac was the first to get on the air with the HF station and began to rack up contacts on 20 meters.  Dan and Peter also took thier turns on 20 and 40 meters.  They were able to make a total of 68 contacts across the country.

Steve-K4SDJ set up his D-Star DV Dongle and made contacts with three other NWS stations and 17 other HAM stations all across the world.  Steve made a connection to the KJ4GGV repeater in Pembroke and I was able to contact him via RF from my station. 

What a great event and we got to test several methods of establishing comms from Coastal Georgia to the NWS in Charleston.  This will prove valuable in times of severe weather.

Thanks to Bobby-W4KSD and the folks at NWS Charleston for hosting us.

Photos available on the Coastal Amateur Radio Society Facebook Page

KJ4YQB Builds 6 Meter J-Pole

New local HAM Chris-KJ4YQB built him a copper pipe 6 meter J-Pole over the Thanksgiving weekend. Way to go Chris!