Battleship Iowa Superstructure Tour - Conclusion-

Sorry for not getting this up sooner, but I had some other things to do.

SO....let's see....where were we.....

After leaving the CEC, we went up several flights of ladders (narrow, steep stairs for the land-bound folks), and made our way to "CONN2", which is the highest point on the ship where it can be steered from.

In getting up there, we passed the room where the transmitter for the SPS-67 radar is located:

And I stuck my head in to grab a picture of the rack:

Looking at the hand made table taped to the cabinet, you can see that this radar operates in C-Band, and outputs approximately 50 dBm of power.

For those that don't "know" dBm, this equates to approximately 100 Watts. Since the chart doesn't specify whether this is peak or average power, but knowing just a bit about radar, I'm going to assume this is an average power measurement. Not knowing the pulse width and duty cycle, I can't calculate the peak power, but the Wikipedia article states that it's 280 kilowatts, which "seems" about right for a high-power surface search radar.

Note: Do NOT stand in front of the antenna when the radar is in operation!

There wasn't much else to see in this room, so I didn't take any other pix. We did stop by another radar room which was full of equipment, waveguides, waveguide switches, isolators, and other radar gear, but unfortunately I didn't take any pix in there.

Me bad!



After going up another couple of flights of ladders, we reached "CONN2", or the Number 2 "Conning Station" where the ship can be maneuvered from:

Once again, as in the Aft Steering Compartment, the ship's wheel is missing:

The one from this position is in some USN facility in D.C., and we're trying to borrow it back so we can make a copy.



There's an Engine Room Telegraph to signal speed changes from up here, along with a Shaft Revolution Indicator:

And a table listing shaft revolutions and speed in knots, showing that you can get pretty fine speed control by calling for a given number of shaft turns:

And a couple of weather repeaters:

The horizontal slits in the armor are the viewing ports to see where you're going:

The armor isn't very thick up here, maybe 2~3", and I have no idea what the "X" means that's on the covers.



There's also a Chart House up here, and the room designator indicates we're on the "08" level:

And the Chart House is pretty well stripped:

Steeping out shows we're pretty far above the deck here:

And you have a pretty nice view of the harbor where the Iowa is berthed:

The deteriorating structure in the above pic is some kind of duct work for one of the radars that used to be mounted on the platform above it.

One of those many things on the ship that need to be cleaned up/restored.



And what's a BIG ship without a BIG Ship's Whistle?

This one used to be steam powered, but nobody on the tour could remember what powers it these days:

One of the signaling lamps on the starboard side:

A close-up:

And her mate, on the port side:

And that's it for this crew tour, other than the LONG climb back down to the main deck.