March 10th B-17 Radio Work

On March 10th, Carroll-WX4Y, Mac-KF4LMT, and I went over to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum to do a closer inspection of some of the radio gear that came with the B-17 that is currently undergoing restoration.  We met Jerry, Marshall, and Jim and got our official "City of Savannah" t-shirts and volunteer name tags.  We're now official!  We only had a couple of hours so we went over to the equipment store room and got right to work.  We opened up the case on the BC-348 Receiver and were pleasantly surprised at just how clean and well preserved everything looked.  Wow, what a beautiful piece of equipment!  No sign of damage or age whatsoever.  Amazing how well this 65+ year old radio looks!  Carroll seems to think that this radio will be no problem at all to get running.  After some photos and documenting, we closed the case and moved on to an RT-18/ARC-1 VHF transceiver.  This particular radio was not in quite the condition that the reciever is in.  But, everything appears to be in place and "fixable".  Took some more photos and made some more notes then put the case back on this one.  After we cleaned things back up a bit we talked about some next steps.  Carroll is going to try to find a service manual and schematic diagrams of the radios.  Mac is going to find some articles on BC-348 restorations for future reference, and I'm going to research the RT-18 and find out the best way to clean the exterior cases and control panels.  On our next visit we plan to bring some of Carroll's test equipment to test the tubes and capacitors.  It was a great visit and we are on our way!

Mar 5-7 ARRL International DX Contest

Boy did we have a great time as a club participating in the ARRL International DX Contest as a club entry this year.  We operated our very fine club station at the Southside Fire Department with the new addition of a Icom 756 ProIII transciever that once belonged to Mr. Ed Bigbie-W4MMQ.  I was honored to operate his radio.  At about 4:30, Kevin-KW4B, John-N2DRL, and I arrive at the station to put up dipoles for 80 and 40 meters.  We used Kevin's air powered line launcher "canon" to get the lines up in the tress and used the pulleys on our tower for the other ends.  Got the antennas up, feed line run, and tested with the analyzer before dark.  Jere-KT4ZB arrived about 5:30 and setup the logging program on the computer and made sure everything was good to go.  Steve-K4SDJ arrived and helped with the final touches.  When 7:00pm rolled around we were on the air.  Jere made the first run of contacts and Kevin, John, Steve, and I ran out to grab some some dinner.  Once we had our strength back, we began to take turns on the radio.  Several operators began to show up as the evening wore on and many got an opportunity to operate the station.  Ken-W4JKG showed up at about midnight and operated till about 0400 making quite a few contacts on 40 meters.  I decided to stay overnight and worked a seperate radio on 80 meters under my callsign.  I made about 30 contacts till Ken left at 0400.  Then I jumped on the club station till 0530 when Kevin came back in.  Kevin relieved me and I ran home to shower and change then went over and met the normal crownd for breakfast at SunnySide Up.  After breakfast we went back to the station and many more HAMs began to show up.  I had the opportunity to give some "new operator training" to one of our new HAMs, Fred Kuhn-KJ4PST.  Helped Fred setup his handheld for all of the local repeaters and tested it.  Fred got to make his first radio contact with his friend, Ra-N4RVM, and was quite thrilled.  Operateors came and went throughout the day and we have a total of 10 HAMs that made contacts in the contest.  Once dinner time came around, Ra-N4RVM had pizza delievered for us all.  Thanks Ra!  As the nght wore on we were really racking up the contacts.  The bands were in really good shape and our very nice rotatable beam antenna was doing a great job.  We even had a handful of contacts on 10 meters.  Going on 40 hours with no sleep I decided to stay as loong as I could Saturday night to keep the station in operation.  I finally called it quits at around 0200 and locked things up and headed home for a few hours of sleep.  Steve and Kevin were back at the station at around 0700 and things were rolling again.  We only had about 5 hours out of the 48 where the station was not in operation!  Nice feat!  Once again we operated with several HAMs throughout the day on Sunday.  Kevin really had some nice runs and had well over half of our total of 451 contacts.  Great job Kevin!  Kevin made contact number 451 with about 30 seconds left in the contest.  What great fun.  At about 1800, Steve and I started getting things ready to stow and took down the 40 and 80 meter antennas.  Byt he time Kevin and completed the final contact, we had things just about packed away.  What a sense of accomplishment when 1900 arrived and we looked at our final tally!  I want to personally thank Jere-KT4ZB for his idea and for his guidance and expertise in the contest.  What a tresure he is.  And to Steve for his logistics and coordination support.  To Ra for the pizza.  And of course to all of the HAMs who operated and assisted with this effort.  Here is a list of those who operated the station followed by an list of all who participated in some way.

OPERATORS
- KT4ZB, Jere
- KW4B, Kevin
- N2DRL, John
- K4GTM, Guy
- KJ4EGZ, Ted
- W4JKG, Ken
- N4RVM, Ra
- KA4CID, Mark
- KG3Z, Tom
- K4WP, Bill

OTHER HAMs in ATTENDANCE
- K4SDJ, Steve
- KI4DZD, Edward
- KF4JBQ, Lester
- W4REQ, Ralph
- KJ4PTP, Kirk
- KJ4FAV, Paul
- KJ4PSU, Will
- KJ4HAI, Melissa
- KJ4PST, Fred
- KD4LUG, Andy
- KJ4SMW, Arthur
- KG4NKE, Matthew
- W4SWJ, Sue

Mar 3rd CARS Club Mtg at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum

On Mar 3rd we held our monthly club meeting at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum where we are assisting with the restoration of the radio compartment of the B-17 "City of Savannah".  With almost 30 club members in attendance, we held a short club meeting in one of the very nice conference rooms then we heard from Jerry McLaughlin who is the Project Manager for the B-17 restoration.  Jerry gave us a short history of the aircraft and how it came to become part of this fine museum.  Next we went downstairs to actually get an up close and personal look at the aircraft.  Jerry introduced us to the Wed night crew of volunteers who were working on the aircraft and we were able to actually climb into the plane and look at the bomb bay, cockpit, and of course the radio compartment.  What a treat.  We spent a good hour in awe over this mighty machine.  Took alot of pictures and talked about our plans for the radio gear.  What a huge success the meeting was and what a great group of hosts that Jerry and his team were.  We are looking forward to getting started!

March 2nd, 2010 Air Force One Visit To Hunter Army Airfield

Had a rare opportunity to observe and monitor Air Force One as it arrived and departed Hunter AAF in Savannah on March 2nd, 2010.  I positioned myself at the north end of the runway 10 at Hunter around 0900 on Tuesday.  I had a pair of binoculars and observed ground activities on Hunter as they prepared for the arrival.  I was also monitoring the Hunter Security Forces on my scanner and was able to feed updates to my friend Ann Lindholm who was positioned along the motorcade route with other Tea Party patriots.  My friend Mac-KF4LMT relayed to me when he heard Air Force One transition into Savannah airspace so I tuned over to the Hunter tower frequency to hear Air Force One contact tower and recieve clearance to land.  Aircraft 28000 touched down around 1135 and taxied to the terminal where it was still visible from my vantage point.  Most of the comm that I monitored was of the tower and ground control and then of local security.  Of course all Secret Service comms were encrypted.  Once POTUS was in the limo and on his way to Savannah Tech, I broke off and met Mac for some lunch.  Later in the afternoon I went back to the same location to monitor and observe departure.  Not much comms until Air Force One requested clearance for engine start from ground control.  As Air Force One taxied to the active runway 10 they switched over to Hunter Tower where they requested and recieved clearance for takeoff.  Air Force One began takeoff roll and rotated at around 1530.  I snapped this photo just before they dissappeared into the low cloud deck and switched over to departure.  What a great time.  I so appreciate all of the airmen that operate that fine aircraft.......especially the comm crew!  Sorry, I'm partial!

MASONIC PANCAKE BREAKFAST AND HAM RADIO EVENT

On 27 March 2010, from 8am to 11am, Bryan Masonic Lodge #303 will hold a Pancake Breakfast. The cost is $5.00 - all you can eat. The proceeds from this fundraiser will go to benefit the Masonic Children's Camp located at Shellmans Bluff. Bryan Masonic Lodge is located on Bass St., Richmond Hill, GA. The directions are listed below:

Directions to the lodge:

A: From I-95: Take Exit 90, GA 144, East for ~1.5 miles;
Right onto Edsel Drive for ~300 yards;
Right onto Bass Street; lodge is on the left.

B: From GA 17: Turn East on 144 for ~.5 miles;
Right onto Edsel Drive for ~300 yards;
Right onto Bass Street; lodge is on the left.

If you need assistance with directions on the morning of the breakfast, call 912 660 2438, Larry or get on the 146.970 repeater and make a call to either KF4JCC, David; KD4NUE, David; N4VAD, Greg or AF4MI, Larry for assistance.

Additionally, there will 2 or 3 fully equipped portable Amateur and MARS stations operating for those that are interested. SSB, Digital and CW will be in use.

We look forward to seeing all of you there to enjoy the breakfast and 'playing radio'.

New Callsigns Have Been Issued

FCC callsigns have been issued for our newest Amateur Radio Operators.  Congratulations to all!

Charles Seyle - Technician - KJ4SMZ

Arthur DeMarchis - Technician - KJ4SMW

Cameron Bolduc - Technician - KJ4SMV

Patricia Gibbs - Technician - KJ4SNF

Freddy Fairman - Technician - KJ4SMU

Al Lucas - General - KJ4SMY

Rose Larkin - Technician - KJ4SMX

Hector Eide - General - KH2FA

Successful Amateur Radio Test Session

We had a very successful exam session today here in Savannah with six students from our recent Technician class all passing the exam.  Congratulations folks!  Special recognition to Al Lucas who passed the Technician and the General exams all in one sitting!  We also had a young man from Jacksonville who made the trip up here to test and he passed as well.  And we had another person, Hector, who passed the upgrade to General.  We'll be having another test session in March for those folks who were in the class but were unable to test today. 

Here's a list of the new and upgraded HAMs.

Arthur DeMarchis  -  Techician
Patricia Gibbs  -  Technician
Freddy Fairman  -  Technician
Rose Larkin  -  Technician
Charles Seyle  -  Technician
Cameron Bolduc  -  Technician
Al Lucas  -  Technician then upgrade to General
Hector Eide  -  General

Thanks a bunch to our Volunteer Examiner team of Steve - K4SDJ, Ra - N4RVM, and Bill - K4WP.

Technician Class Session #4

We had a good session #4 of the current Technician class that we are teaching here in Savannah.  This week we covered Licensing Regulations, Operating Regulations, and Electrical and RF Safety.  This finished up the study guide.  Then we did a short review session and ran thru a practice test.  Everyone seems to be doing just fine and should be ready for the exam on Saturday. 

Feb 12 Winter Weather Event in Savannah

Well a good swath of Georgia got some sleet and snow this evening. We got about half an inch in parts of Savannah with some of the inland counties getting as much as 2.5 inches. Once the rain started turning into sleet and then snow, a number of amateur radio operators and Skywarn weather spotters gathered on our local ARES designated repeater to deliver weather reports to pass on to the National Weather Service in Charleston. NWS Charleston has responsibility for twelve Coastal Georgia counties and really depend on weather spotters to provide real time weather updates. We established communications with the NWS Charleston office amateur radio station WX4CHS first on 3.975 and then moved to one of the South Carolina repeaters. As Dan-KF4MND who is the new DEC for NWS Charleston began to gather reports from Chatham, Effingham, Bulloch, Bryan, Liberty and Long counties, I relayed the reports to WX4CHS via the 146.715 repeater in Whitehall, SC. We continued to feed reports to Charleston until the snow had passed through the area. This was another great opportunity to exercise our ARES and Skywarn procedures. Great job all around.

Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief Article

Here's an article in the current issue of The Christian Index about our communications unit with the Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief Team.

http://www.christianindex.org/6232.article

CARS March Meeting

The March monthly meeting of the Coastal Amateur Radio Society will be held at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler. We will meet at the museum on Wed, Mar 3rd at 7:00pm where we will hear from Jerry McLaughlin, the "City of Savannah" Restoration Project Manager. Jerry will give us an update on the restoration of the B-17 and we will get to see the aircraft and associated radio compartment equipment.

Technician Class Session #3

Session #3 of the Technician Class went very well this past Thursday evening. Everyone is following along nicely and seems to be having a good time. We covered antennas, feedlines, and made it all the way through chapter 4 of the study guide. Next week will be our last session and we'll be covering licensing regulations, operating regulations, and electrical and RF safety. Then we'll wrap it up with a review.

Feb 3, 2010 Statewide Tornado Drill

Amateur Radio Operators in Chatham and surrounding counties participated in the annual statewide tornado drill in conjunction with the Severe Weather Awareness Week in Georgia. At approximately 0900 the National Weather Service in Peachtree City issued an exercise statewide tornado warning. The Georgia ARES activated a statewide Skywarn net on our primary frequency of 3.975 Mhz and many county programs throughout the state activated local Skywarn nets. I activiated the Chatham County Area Skywarn net on our primary ARES VHF frequency of 146.970 at approximately 0910 and began to take checkins for operators throughout the region. As folks checked in, I logged thier name, call letters, location, and Skywarn Weather Spotter number. We had great participation with a total of 16 checkins from Chatham, Effingham, Bryan, Liberty, and Long Counties. We also had participation from our local EMA and TSA.
This was really good considering I had not given anyone information regarding this drill ahead of time. So it was truly a "no notice" exercise. Many of us also checked into the statewide net on 3975 with Charles-K4GK acting as NCS.

After the exercise was complete, we terminated the local net and Greg-N4VAD sent our local net report to GEMA via WINLINK. Overall a very good exercise. Thanks to all who participated and thank you for being prepared to move weather related traffic.

New Coastal Amateur Radio Society Website

Check out our newly improved website for the Coastal Amateur Radio Society. Kevin-KW4B has done an awesome job building it for the club. Still a few more things to do and some content to add but it's looking really good.

http://www.w4lhs.com/

We also now have our club newsletter "Groundwaves" posted on the site. Enjoy the Feb 2010 issue now. http://www.coastalamateurradiosociety.net/PDF/GW201002.pdf

B-17 "City of Savannah" Radio Compartment Restoration

We have a very unique opportunity to contribute to the restoration of a piece of American history. We were contacted a couple weeks ago about our interest in helping to restore the radio compartment of the B-17 that is currently undergoing a thorough restoration at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum here in Savannah. Wow, of course we’re interested! The B-17 has been at the museum now for a full year and the focus has been on a very detailed cleaning. Now the team is ready to begin planning for the restoration.

On Jan 20th Mac-KF4LMT and Guy-K4GTM went over to the museum to meet with Jerry McLaughlin who is the Project Manager of the restoration. Jerry and Marshall Brooks took us onto the aircraft where we got a good look at the radio compartment. Afterwards, we went into the artifacts room to check out all of the radio equipment and associated gear. Wow, what a treasure. We then spent some time with Jerry and Marshall discussing how we might be able to contribute to this effort.


Some of the next steps will be to research what exactly should be in the compartment, determine the feasibility of making some of the radio gear operational, helping the museum acquire any missing equipment, and of course installing the equipment in the radio room. Whew, lots to do. This should be an extremely rewarding project. Stay tuned for more information. Learn more about this project on the Mighty Eight website at http://www.mightyeighth.org/.

Jan 30 Winter Field Day Outing

We took advantage of the Society for the Preservation of Amateur Radio (SPAR) sponsored Winter Field Day on Jan 30th to get outdoors and operate in "other than normal conditions". Had breakfast with the normal crowd at 0700 then stopped back by the house to pick up some stuff and fill a thermos with coffee. It was already about 61 degrees at 0800 this morning and it was raining like the dickens. Just a miserable day to do anything outdoors but we decided to press on with our activites. Afterall, in the event of an emergency or a disaster, we're not going to be able to pick the weather! So I headed over to the MWR office at Hunter Army Airfield to pick up the key to our reserved shelter out at the Lott's Island Recreation Area. Got over to the island around 0930 and began to setup my radio station. Did I mention it was raining? But at least it was warm. Before anyone else showed up I had my Kenwood TS-440 powered up and a 20 meter dipole antenna strung up between two trees at about 40 feet. Shortly, Mark-KA4CID and his son Nicholas showed up as did Matthew-KG4NKE. Eventually Philip-KA4KOE and his son Jordan arrived as did Kevin-KW4B. Philip set up his military manpack and his bumper mounted vertical antenna. Philip and I began to operate and started racking up several contacts all over Europe on 20 meters. The radios and antennas seemed to be working fine. The field day contest started at noon and we started making contacts with other winter field day stations from Florida up to Canada, out to Texas and Arizona, and all thru the upper midwest where we talked to a guy in Duluth, Minnesota that was operating in an ice fishing hut where it was -14 degrees! Bob-KG6MUQ stopped by for a while as did Lester-KF4JBQ.

Peter-KJ4FAW arrived and brought a nice lunch of bar-b-que sandwiches and Brunswick Stew for us all. Boy did that hit the spot. Thanks Peter! Once we finished with chow, Peter set up his hombrew buddi-pole antenna and began to operate on his Icom 706. That antenna was no more than 10 feet off the ground but it was reaching out all over the upper midwest and Canada!

We also had a chance to see Kevin's new homebrew air powered "line launcher". Wow, he launched the projectile over about an 80 foot tree with just 30 psi. Awesome contraption.

Well as the afternoon wore on the temperature began to drop dramatically and the wind began to pick up. We went from t-shirts to coats, hats, and gloves. Total of a 20 degree drop from 0930 to 1630. Cold and wet but we hung in there. Started to get dark so we packed everything back up, cleaned up the shelter, and headed our seperate ways. I never get tired of setting up and operating a station in a new location with minimal resources and talking all over the world on 100 watts and a piece of wire.

Started New Technician License Class

Well we started our first amateur radio license class of the year on Jan 28. Kevin-KW4B and I are teaching again and Tom-KG3Z is assisting. We've got 12 students. Wow, our biggest class yet. A great group of people from all walks of life. Everyone seemed motivated and genuinely interested in the material. In session #1 we covered a "Welcome to Amateur Radio" and then jumped right into "Radio and Electronics Fundamentals". Everyone was able to follow along very nicely. Looking forward to next week when we'll continue the electronics fundamentals and move on to "Operating Station Equipment".