20-METER OPERATING TABLE.

17-METER OPERATING TABLE.

 

RIGHT: Ned KH7JJ on 17-meters.

LEFT: Lee KH6BZF, the bloomin' zipper flipper.

RIGHT: Bob KH6LDO. Bob is so skillful he can talk, log, & play solitare at the same time (and maybe even chew gum).

(Picture and caption courtesy of Pete Greene N2LVI)

• 

•  

•  

• LEFT: Pete Greene N2LVI, visitor from our sister ship Battleship New Jersey Amateur Radio Club
  

• (Picture courtesy of Pete Greene N2LVI)
  

As we all know, Mother Nature bats last, and she did her best to knock us out this past weekend. Friday afternoon and evening propagation was fair, but on Saturday and Sunday we had solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and generally terrible radio conditions. The only exception was on 20 meters from about 0200Z to 0600Z which was fairly good on both Friday and Saturday evenings (HST). The rest of the time and on other bands we had very spotty conditions, such that a band would appear open and we would make a few contacts, and then all the signals would disappear within a time frame of about 20 minutes.

The bulk of our contacts at this point in the solar cycle were on 20 meters. We had a second station operating on 17 meters. Nothing heard on 15 meters or higher. We made one contact on 40, and there would have been more except that we had unexpected interference between the 40 and 20 operating positions.

Having said all of that, we ended up with 560 contacts, not too bad for being near the solar cycle minimum. As always, many of our contacts were with Navy veterans or others who had special memories of Missouri or Pearl Harbor. Although we were not primarily looking for contacts with other ships, we did work seven. We heard our sister ship New Jersey (NJ2BB) but were unable to break through the pileup. We didn't get everybody's QTH, but we worked at least 40 states and 23 countries.

Thanks to our operators/loggers for coping with the difficult conditions this year. In alphabetical order:

Ned Conklin KH7JJ

Jim Davis N6PJQ

Pete Greene N2LVI (visiting from the battleship New Jersey)

Dan Hausauer W0CN

Bob Maguire KH6LDO

John Peters K1ER

Lee Wical KH6BZF

Jim Williams ZL1BOS (visiting from New Zealand)

Pete Wokoun KH6GRT

And special thanks to Mike Wiedenbach, our liaison and supervisor on the Missouri Memorial Association staff, who has enthusiastically supported all our efforts in Radio Central.

(Write-up by Ned KH7JJ)

---