cs Cable Retriever is based in Subic Bay, Philippines, and is responsible for the maintenance of cables in the South East Asia and Indian Ocean region. In practice, most of the repairs are around Taiwan and Hong Kong and are mainly to repair damage caused by anchors and earthquakes. Cables do occasionally fail of their own accord, usually from a factory defect blowing out under the influence of the high voltage.

Many of the repairs are in shallow water less than a few hundred metres deep and the  Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) is used to locate, recover and re-bury the cables after being repaired.  Cable Retriever carries a modern ROV system. It is called ST201 and nicknamed Barracuda.  The ROV can also be tasked with recovering "Black Box" data and voice recorders from downed aircraft  although this is, fortunately, a rare occurrence.

October 2002 to January 2003

I was qrv on 6m from time to time but conditions were generally much worse than last year at this time. I guess  that the cycle is well on it's downward slope and we won't get many opportunities for DX until the next cycle  picks up. Nonetheless, I managed to work in to PY whilst the ship was in OL93. This was done with 5W from the   FT817 using the quarter wave shown below but without the avian load. The hf whip was also used on 14 and 21MHz when things became too boring on 6m. It also functioned very well to receive hf weather fax pictures from JMH as well as broadcasts from the BBC World Service.

Countries worked on 6m....9M6, 9N7, A45, DU, JA, KH6, PY, VR2, VU, ZK1

May 2002 to July 2002

Amateur operating on 50MHz was quite curtailed this time due to lack of enthusiasm now that 6m is in decline. I did, however, work quite a few JA stations and I hope they appreciate the rare squares! The antenna was not so  hot as I was a bit short of coax and, I must admit, enthusiasm. I made do with a quarter wave on a mobile gutter  mount outside my window. It made a handy perch for the local birds in Subic!  Best DX was to VK8AH in Darwin on SSB.

There were quite a few Es openings during this period as TV channel R1 was very loud on many days. We were mostly located near Taiwan, and at the end of June we were working on a cable in the Babuyan Islands area in locators PL00 and PK09. After this we were given a repair to do off Singapore and once we arrived I got a Diamond HM6 multiband mobile  hf antenna to use on the ship. The antenna resonated well on all the specified bands but I did not get any chance  to operate on hf before I left the ship and went home. HF maritime mobile operating would be a bit of a novelty for me. Does anyone have an English language version of the operating sheet for the HM6??