Battleship Iowa's "Original" 1980's Transmitters Possibly ON-THE-AIR This Coming Wednesday!

WELL....it's been a long, slow, slog, but we're 90+% there.

We have two "Red Phones" mapped out through the "Coke Machine", the audio interface boxes, the transmit and receive switchboards, and the R-1051 receivers and the AN/URT-23A transmitters.

We've verified that we have correct receive audio through the receive path, and the transmit audio from the "Red Phones" also makes it down to the Transmitter Room, and drive the #3 transmitter to full (1000 Watts +) power into a dummy load.

For the receive antennas we're using the "Twin Whips" mounted up on the bridge, and for transmit, we'll be using the "Goal Post" or "Bull's Horns" antenna located just forward of the #2 stack. The "Goal Post" antenna is fed with (I think) 3-1/2" Heliax cable from the transmitter room, and some time ago I made up an adapter that connected the Andrew flange to a Type-N female so we could run coax into one of the large antenna couplers down in the transmit room.

I used my Comet CAA-500 Antenna Analyzer to verify that adjusting the controls on the coupler caused the impedance to vary, and the manner in which it varied it varied in "looked" just like we were tuning a random length antenna with a good old Johnson Matchbox.


The players are as follows:



A "Red Phone":

The Infamous "Coke Machine":

R-1051 Receiver:

Receive Antenna Couplers:

"Twin Whips" Receive Antennas:

AN/URT-23 Transmitter:

Transmit Antenna Coupler(s):

"Goal Post" Transmit Antenna:

I'm posting this early so those who are interested in trying work us will have plenty of time to get ready. We know we transmit better than we receive, even running 100 Watts from the Amateur Radio gear, so please be patient with us if we manage to make this happen.

Not all of us are "Contest Operators", so pile-ups will be dealt with "Loudest Heard First", and then we'll try to get to the weaker stations.

Look for us in the upper half of the General section of the 20 Meter phone band. *IF* we get the gear On-The-Air, it will be after 2000 UTC, and before 2359 UTC.

We'll be using an individual's callsign, not NI6BB, and we'll include "Battleship Iowa" in all our CQ's.

Hope to see you On The Air!


I'll have my tablet computer with me, so if this is a "GO!", I'll make a post here right before we go live OTA.

Friday Already?

Still waiting for the "4-pin" cable from the Maestro RR people so I can finish installing the new Kenwood radio into my Jeep. They're in Canada, so it might be here today, but I'm betting it won't be here until next week.

And the two switches on the steering wheel that control the radio channel selection (left switch) and the volume (right) switch haven't shown up yet, either.

The USPS "tracking number" claims they were delivered last Saturday, but my buddy where my mail drop is hasn't seen them.

I dropped the vendor a note, and he sent another set out on Wednesday, so they also might be here today since he's in AZ.

And of course, it's supposed to rain some this weekend, starting on Saturday night. *IF* the parts get here today I should be able to swap out the radios tomorrow before it starts raining.

And on the Iowa, we were (FINALLY!) able to get audio routed from one of the "Red Phones", through the "Coke Machine", and the transmitter audio switchboard, down to transmitter #3, and were able to get 500 Watts output from the transmitter into the dummy load. We then noticed that the Power Output knob was backed off a bit, and once we ran that up to max, we were getting 1000 Watts out.

The Power Output control knob is VERY nonlinear in it's action, and turning it down just a few degrees drops the power from 1000 Watts to 400~500 Watts. We don't really need full power out of the transmitter, and considering the two antennas we'll be using, we don't WANT 1000 Watts, as the tour route gets to within 5 or 10 feet of the antennas, and we have to limit the RF exposure to our guests.