June 19 Antenna Work at the CEMA EOC

Had breakfast with some of the guys this morning....as usual. Then over to the CEMA EOC to install a new HF antenna. We also installed a new Kenwood Dual Band radio and tested it as well as a new LDG Z-11 Pro auto tuner for the TS-2000.  Once we had the new G5RV antenna installed we hooked things up and tested it with the new tuner and the TS-2000.  Tuned up fine and recieved well on all bands.  No one one really on the bands this morning to test with but we did make contact on 40 and 20 with John-N2DRL in Midway.  I'll go back out there one day this week and check in to the Georgia Traffic Net and get some reports.  Thanks to Steve-K4SDJ, Kevin-KW4B, Mac-KF4LMT, Mark-KA4CID, and Dustin-KI4MQD.  Shoulda taken a few more pics at the EOC but forget..........de K4GTM

June Technician Class Update

The Technician Class is going well. We're up to 11 students in this class. We held session #3 this past week and will finish up with session #4 on Tuesday. Students are scheduled to test on June 26th at Field Day. We actually had two of our students test this past week! John passed the Technician exam and Jeff passed both the Tech and General! Great job guys. They should have thier call signs anyday now.
Now we just need to do some good followup and be sure we help the new HAMs get involved in the local clubs and radio activities. Hope to see some of them stick around and operate at Filed Day.
That's it for now.......de K4GTM

June 2010 Technician Class

We started a new Technician Class here in Savannah on June 1st. Still time to attend. We will meet Jun 8, 15, 22 from 6:00pm til 9:00pm at Memorial Medical Center Hoskins Building. Email me for more info at k4gtm@arrl.net.

May 25 Savannah Area Hospital Hurricane Exercise

We had a successful comm drill today in support of the Hurricane Evacuation Exercise at Memorial Medical Center. This was an annual table top drill for the leadership and EOC staff at Memorial. We set up the amateur radio station K4MUM to demonstate our communications capabilities in the event of loss of primary modes of communication.


We also took the opportunity to include Candler-W3SJC and St. Joseph's-K4SJH Hospitals in the exercise. Both of these hospitals have new radio station equipment and this is the first time they have been included in a local exercise. Thanks to Kevin-KW4B for his leadership in acquiring the equipment, coordinating the installation of antenna and feedline, installation of the HF antenna, configuration and testing of the radios, etc. What a great asset Kevin is to the ARES program.

The comm portion of the exercise went very well with operators arriving onsite at the three locations around 0800 to setup and test. The exercise kicked off at 0900 and we established communications between all three hospitals and tested all of the available VHF and UHF repeater systems. We also made sure to test operating on simplex which went very well. We also established HF comm between Memorial and Candler. All three locations operated very well today.

The exercise wrapped up right around 1100 at which time all equipment was disconnected and stowed to be ready for the next drill or emergency activation. Thanks to the following operators for participating today. We have a great ARES program in Chatham and surrounding counties.

Kevin - KW4B
Raymond - KJ4HAE
John - N2DRL
Peter - KJ4FAW
Steve - K4SDJ
Lester - KF4JBQ
Carl - KC4UHM
Guy - K4GTM
Ken - W4JKG

Very Special Contact During Today's Special Event

During today's special event at the benefit for a wounded warrior we had a very special contact with the son of a WWII B-17 pilot.  Rick-N2ETJ heard us talking about next weeks special event station that we are having at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum and told us about his father, Raymond Firmani, who completed 25 combat missions in the B-17 as a pilot in the 8th Air Force.  Wow, this is awesome considering our current work on restoring a B-17 and it's radio compartment at the museum.  Ricks father is still alive and is in his 90s.  The staff at the museum would sure love to talk to Mr. Firmani as they continue to chronical the history of the 8th Air Force.  Rick is planning to make contact with our station, W2W, next Saturday.  We'll see if there might be a way to coordinate for Mr. Firmani to talk with the museum historian.  Rick sent us this picture of his dad's "shadow box" of pictures, insignia, and medals.  Thanks Rick!

May 8, 2010 Special Event Station W4W

Had a great time today operating Special Event Station W2W at the benefit for SSgt Jason Letterman of the 3rd ID who was wounded in Iraq and lost both of his legs.  The benefit was held at Red Gate Farms here in Savannah and it couldn't have been a better venue.  Lot's of live music and food as well as volleyball and horse shoes.  Laura Mackey was a gracious hostess.  A group called Homes For Our Troops (homesforourtroops.org) is raising funds to build SSgt Letterman and his family a handicap friendly home.  What a worthy fundraiser this was.  We set up our station and operated from about 10:00am til 7:00pm and spoke with folks all across the country who asked us to pass on thier appreciation to SSgt Letterman's service and sacrifice.  Thanks to Steve-K4SDJ, Lester-KF4JBQ, Kevin-KW4B, Jere-KT4ZB, and all those who made contact with us.  Learn more about SSgt Letterman at http://redgateevents.wordpress.com/.

B-17 "City of Savannah" Special Event Station W2W on May 15th

The Coastal Amateur Radio Society in Savannah, GA will be activating Special Event Station W2W on May 15th from 9:00am til 5:00pm in conjunction with the Armed Forces Day festivities at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum. CARS is working with the B-17 "City of Savannah" restoration team to restore the radio compartment of this legendary WWII aircraft. We will have our station setup under the wingtip of the aircraft and hope to stream video of the event throughout the day. As a special treat we will also be running a WWII era BC-348 reciever for the public to listen to.


You can learn more about this project at the museum website http://www.mightyeighth.org/b17_restoration.htm.

May5, 2010 B-17 Radio Work Day

We spent a few hours at the museum this afternoon. Steve and I installed pulleys and pull line on two lamp posts on the museum grounds for use in hoisting up a long wire antenna. Which we plan to do for special event stations that we will be having at the museum, the first of which will be on May 15th in conjunction with thier Armed Forces Day festivities. Bruce, the museum facilities manager, was able to get a lift for us to use for the day. All of the museum staff and volunteers have been so accomodating to us.


We were also able to get a first look at two additional BC-348 recievers that the museum has. One of which was just donated to the museum last week and one that they've had in a display case since 1995. Carroll had his tube tester with him today so was able to begin assessing the condition of these radios. Neither one is in as great a shape as the first one that we've got working but Carroll is confident that we can make them operational.

Productive day!

May 1, 2010 Scout Event and GA Baptist Communications Unit Testing

About a dozen Savannah and Statesboro area HAMs participated in another 100th Anniversary of Scouting event this past weekend.  Philip-KA4KOE did another great job of coordinating our radio operations with this activity.  We had three amateur radio stations set up to demonstrate to the scouts.  Many of them are working on earning thier radio merit badge.  We had a nice variety of radios and antennas in operation.  Philip secured the Special Event Callsign W4S (We're 4 Scouting) once again to identify our operation.

We were also able to arrange to bring the Georgia Baptist Disaster Releif Communications Unit 5C to the event as well.  This unit is prepositioned at the Statesboro Airport and ready for activation and deployment in the event the Georgia Baptist Convention is called to respond to support disaster relief activities.  We like to test the unit periodically and provide familiarization training to new members of the ministry.  So it worked out real well to bring it to the scouting event and show it off while we performed our periodic testing.