20-METER OPERATING TABLE.

17-METER OPERATING TABLE.

 

RIGHT: Ned KH7JJ (front) doing logging duties and Bob KH6LDO on 20 meters SSB.

Museum Ships Weekend 2006

June 3-4 (UT)

This was our sixth annual participation in Museum Ships Weekend and for once Mother Nature smiled on us (mostly). Here at the absolute bottom of the sunspot cycle we managed to post our highest contact total ever and worked more DX than we ever have before, although we only used 20 and 17 meters. Final totals were 834 contacts, 48 states (missed only Rhode Island and Wyoming), and 44 countries on all continents. We had 631 contacts on 20 meters using the discone antenna on the bow, and 203 contacts on 17 meters using the pair of 35-foot whips up on the flying bridge. We were primarily calling CQ, not hunting for DX, so the near-WAS and high country total was just a bonus. We also worked eight other museum ships.

From the summaries I've seen so far (and which should be posted shortly at the NJ2BB website ), it appears that we made many more contacts than anyone on the mainland. The highest totals so far for others are 542 (USS Wisconsin), 470 (USS New Jersey), 426 (USG Huron) and 414 (USS Kidd).

Propagation summary (all times UTC): Friday afternoon (Saturday UTC) started slowly but things quickly picked up and from 0100Z to 0430Z we had huge pileups on both 20 and 17 meters. 17 meters closed about 0430Z, but 20 meters stayed open and after about 0530Z there was a good opening to Europe. On Saturday morning we made only about 30 contacts between 1700Z and 2400Z, but after that both 20 and 17 meters opened up again and we had more pileups. Again 17 meters closed about 0430Z, but 20 stayed open, and after 0530Z we had an even stronger opening into Europe than on Friday. There were so many stations calling that the limiting factor in the QSO rate was sorting out the callsigns. Sunday morning was quiet with only another 40 or so QSOs in the books from 1600Z to 2300Z, but the last hour we had a fair run on 17 meters.

As always, many of our contacts were with Navy veterans or others who had special memories of Missouri or Pearl Harbor. We were not primarily looking for contacts with other ships ourselves, but we did work eight: tug Angel's Gate, victory ship Red Oak Victory, aircraft carriers Hornet and Lexington, submarines Albacore and Batfish, LST-325, and the passenger liner Queen Mary. Unusually we did not even hear our sister ship New Jersey all weekend.

We had a fairly small crew this year - Jim N6PJQ and Lee KH6BZF had planned to operate but had last-minute conflicts. Thanks to the operators/loggers we did have for alternately putting up with boredom when the bands were dead and dealing with heavy pile-ups of stations calling when conditions were good.

In alphabetical order:

Chuck Epperson AH6SC

Ron Hashiro AH6RH

Bob Maguire KH6LDO

Pete Wokoun KH6GRT

[+ KH7JJ]

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.

73

Ned KH7JJ