2015 Battleship Iowa Field Day AAR

GROAN.....Well, Field Day is over for another year, and as far as we know, this was the first time the Iowa has ever been on-the-air for Field Day.

Friday was "Set Up Day", and was sunny, hot, and very humid. After 15~20 minutes of working outside we were soaked, and needed to find some shade and have a cold drink.

My buddy Doug came over about 1100, and we loaded the tower and 2 Meter Yagi in the back of his pick-up, and then loaded the two tubs containing most of the gear, and a large soft bag with the rest, in my Jeep.

Camera and laptops went in the front with me, and then my son came by and loaded up the table and chairs and cooler in his Xterra.

SO, off to the ship!

We were able to park close to the front brow, which helped a bit, and we lugged all the gear up the ramp, and one ladder, to the O1 level, portside, just aft of Turret #2, on "The Admiral's Veranda". The starboard side of the ship has the hatch to the Captain's In-Port cabin in this location.

This area is typically used for special events, like the Turret #2 memorial shown above, and is off the tour route, although the tour route runs forward and aft of it, so we had plenty of foot traffic going past wondering what we were doing. Once in a while someboy would stop and say "Oh, that's right, it's Field Day weekend", and we stop work and talk to them. 


We got the antenna assembled and stood it up, aligning the base to True North. Two years ago when we set up for JOTA I tried using my compass for this, and found out there's just a bit too much steel in the area for my little compass to work properly! Turns out the Main Channel in the harbor runs due North/South, so I just got the base of the tower as parallel to the channel as I could.

That was about it for Friday. After lugging all the gear up and putting it together (it takes me about two hours to assemble and align everything) we were soaked, thirsty, hungry, and tired, so we headed home.


I got there about 0830 Saturday morning, and set up the table, and snaked the cables over to the gear:

The Security guys went in the Captain's cabin for us, opened a port hole, and ran our extension cord through it so we'd have power, and I ran some calibration tests with antenna controller to make sure everything was working:

By this time (1100 Local, 1800 UTC) Field Day had started, but since there wasn't going to be a satellite pass for an hour or so, I went down to the Comm Center to see how things were going.



Here's my buddy Doug explaining the logging procedure for the 'phone station to one of our BIARA member who came down to operate:

And Tom and "Doug the Younger" getting in to the swing of things at the CW station:

Things seemed great in the Comm Center so my son and I went back up to the Satellite Station, where it had started to sprinkle, sending us into panic mode:

We scrambled around to get a tarp (Thanks, OPS Guys!) and a pop-up cover (Thanks, Sue!), and by the time we marginally "weatherproofed", we'd missed the pass of AO-73.


Oh, well....at least we were ready for the next pass......:

We made some passes, found some problems I'll describe later, enjoyed the cool, cloudy (but damp!) weather, and shut everything down so we could exit the ship about 2045.

Grabbed a burger on the way home, and hit the rack.

Got back on the Ship about 0845 Sunday morning. It was going to be another hot, muggy day.


Meanwhile, back in the Comm Center on Sunday morning, the CW guys are going great guns:

And "Doug the Younger" and his son have taken over for "Doug the Elder" who's out attending to some ship interface business:

One of the "nice" things about operating the satellite station is that you have gaps between the satellites going over where you can talk to the public as they wander past, so we set up a second table with a bunch of hand outs provided by the ARRL:

One of the "bad" things about operating the satellite station is that you don't have a lot of time to correct equipment problems you discover when a satellite is going over. We made ZERO contacts on AO-7 this year due to there being a problem with the "Doppler.sqf" file that SatPC32 (my tracking and control program) uses to make the Doppler correction and tune the transmitter and receiver to the correct frequencies.

Normally, when a satellite comes up over the horizon, SatPC32 will move the antennas to the correct heading, and tune the radio to the middle of the transponder passband. On the FO-29 satellite this works perfectly. The satellite comes up, I tune to an open frequency in the upper half of the band (the lower half is reserved for CW), transmit my callsign, hear my own voice coming back from the satellite with a slight delay, and proceed to make contacts.

With AO-7 though, I've had to manually change the transmit frequency until I hear myself on the downlink. I never bothered to make a note of which way I had to tune (D'OH!), or if it was a consistent error (Double D'OH!) until this year, as I didn't know what was causing the offset.

This year, since the satellite was pretty weak, I spent some time experimenting, and found the problem due to some modifications I had to make last week to add a new satellite.

In manually adding the information for AO-73, I realized that the "Doppler.sqf" file is where the "base" frequencies are stored that the program applies the Doppler correction to, and then sends the commands to the radio to tune to the correct frequencies.

Somehow, the base frequency entries in the "Doppler.sqf" file for the AO-7 transponder were wrong. They were wrong by exactly 4kHz, and low in frequency, matching the numbers I wrote down as I experimented with radio.

BY the time I edited the file, which requires you to close the program and restart it, AO-7 had gone below the horizon on it's last pass I would be able to use for Field Day this year. I'll set the station up here at home and use it on a regular basis once I get a longer mast to get the antennas above the roof.

The other "problem" we had this year was due to the location on the ship we were directed to use. We only had a clear view of the sky on one side of the ship, which resulted in losing satellites once they dropped below a certain elevation to the West of us.

I was going along great on FO-29, and all of a sudden the receiver got very quiet, with not only all the active signals disappearing, but also transponder noise floor dropping to zero.

I stuck my head out of the pop-up, and found a situation almost identical to this:

It's just a bit hard to hear anything through all that steel! That's my son to the right in the photo.

When we set up for the BSA JOTA event, we were on the portside fantail, and had a pretty clear view of the sky. Since there was a major private event back there Saturday night, the area was closed off. The other area we  had requested was forward, beyond the area where our visitors are usually allowed, but that area was in use Friday night, so we couldn't set up there Friday afternoon.

There were only two usable passes of one satellite, AO-73, Sunday morning, one about 5* above the horizon, and the other that started about 8 minutes before the end of Field Day.

I decided it wasn't worth the effort, as we'd proven on Saturday the 5* passes in that direction were not feasible due to all the cranes and stacked containers on the other side of the channel, and since I'd missed the only other pass of AO-73 on Saturday due to having some high-level visitors, and I'd had trouble using AO-73 the previous week at home, I started an early tear down of the station, and helped the guys in the Comm Center by logging for them.

Sunday was also another hot, sunny, muggy day, so I took my time and didn't rush things.

So, the final tally for the Satellite Station was 12 contacts on FO-29, one on the SO-50 FM satellite, and two terrestrial 2 Meter contacts, one in South Orange County, and one in San Diego County in the Twentynine Palms area.

The 'phone guys did almost 600 contacts, and the CW guys did almost 300. I haven't finished merging the logs and adding up the bonus points yet, so I'm not sure how we did in comparison to the other entries in the 2D class.

I won't be running satellites aboard next year as we decided the cost/effort/benefit ratio just doesn't wash. I typically would go back to the Field Day site at 0430 on Sunday to get ready for the 0500~0730 satellite passes, and always doubled my score from the previous day, but we couldn't get back on the ship until 0800 Sunday morning. Plus, I had the "sky blockage" issue this year, so for 2016 I'll, run the 6 Meter/VHF/UHF station from the same location using some stacked omnidirectional antennas mounted at the rail, and possibly some amplifiers to make myself heard.


So, a big thanks to to the Security and Operations people on the Iowa who helped us make this happen, and guided us in learning the ropes to running a "mini event" like this.

"Semper Gumby", guys and gals, and carry on!

Field Day......

I was going to post something, but I'm too beat.

More tomorrow after I get back home....if I'm able to move!

Simulated Firing of Iowa's Turret #1, Gun #2

Several weeks ago the Iowa hosted a very special event for the SEAL-NSW Family Foundation.

One of the things they did was crank up the barrel of the #2 gun in the #1 turret, and insert some type of "Pyrotechnic Device" in the gun.

Well, I ran across this on YouTube......

Enjoy the fireworks!

Last Field Day Preps Are Done

The satellite antennas and tower were taken down to the Iowa this afternoon, and were assembled and ready to go or Field Day.

We'll have a table and pop-up, and I'm taking my two folding camping chairs and a large cooler full of ice, sodas, water, and "sports drinks" to keep hydrated with.

We were pretty much cooked by the time we had things done, as there's NO breeze on that side and elevation on the ship, so it might be a bit brutal on Saturday, as we'll be in full sun until about 1600 when the Sun is far enough West to "set" behind the superstructure.

And I'm taking my "real" camera tomorrow so I'll have something better than cellphone pix to submit to the AMSAT Journal and QST!

And of course, you'll see them here first......

Busy, Busy Day

Spent the day running around the ship, and looking at the places the Ops and Security folks agreed to allow me to mount my satellite antennas for Field Day.

We'll be on the portside O1 level, using what's called "The Admiral's Veranda".

I have a completely clear view to the North, East, and South, with the West pretty much blocked by the superstructure and turret #2.

BUT......I plotted all of the satellite passes from 1800UTC Saturday when Field Day starts, till 1800 UTC when it ends, and NONE of the passes will be to the West far enough to be blocked.

And since there's an office area on the other side of the portholes, they'll open a porthole for me to run my extension cord through, saving me the trouble of lugging my generator, drip containment pan, fuel, and fire extinguishers aboard.

Then after I dropped off the Field Day signs to one of the members of the other radio club, and checked my mail, I came home and finished designing a simple step-start/inrush protector for a friend on the Celica Supra forum. He's got a turbocharged Toyota 1UZ 4.0 liter V8 in his Mark-II Supra, and is using a set of Taurus electric fans to pull air through his custom aluminum radiator.

The problem is on high-sped the fans draw 70 Amps on start-up, and clobber his electrical system. So, a series resistor that limits the current to about 20 Amps, and gets shorted out after 2 seconds, shoild do the job.

Thursday is take the whole satellite station apart, and put everything back in the storage boxes, and wait for Friday when we move it all down to the Iowa and at least put the antennas back together and align them.

And I finally got to check out my new headset/boom mic!

I got the "Deluxe" upgrade kit that included gel ear pads with cotton cover "socks", and a nice, big soft, fuzzy head band.

These things look identical to the David Clark H10-30 aviation headsets I have, but have "standard" plugs on them instead of the Aviation-type plugs, and are about half the price.

They sound great, seal out 99% of the background noise, have great transmit audio, and are extremely comfortable.

And I'm hitting the rack!

See you all later........

Yes, I'm Messing With The Layout

I got kind of tired of the orange and brown, so I picked another canned theme, and tweaked it a bit.

If it displays weirdly on your PC, PLEASE LET ME KNOW, and I'll try and make it more compatible to more readers.

I have a 24" wide-screen monitor, but a lot of you may not, so what looks "good" to me might look really bad to you.....

Happy Father's Day!

To all my fellow Dads out there....

Satellite Station On-The-Air and Working

Got the cross-boom mounted through the elevation rotor, mounted the preamps and antennas, connected all the cables, and walked the tower up.

And I had it all finished 30 minutes after the last satellite passes (of the satellites I normally use) of the day.

RATS!

So, I decided to give SO-50, an FM satellite, a try, and I talked to one of my friends in Arizona.

The next satellite I wanted to try was AO-73, aka "FUNCube-1", which is one of the reasons the SDR USB "dongles" got popular. I'd heard the earlier pass, but I'd never made the correct changes to my tracking and control program to use it, so while I was able to hear the downlink, it was so late in the pass I was able to manually juggle the radio knobs fast enough to make any contacts through it.

And on the next pass, it was too low to the east, and almost behind my garage, so no joy there, either.

I did manage to copy a lot of packet radio traffic from the Space Station tonight, but they probably won't be active on Field Day.

Oh, well.......I have about 4 hours on Sunday to do some further testing before we have to leave to go to the Father's Day festivities on the Iowa.

This is Why I Missed a Day a Couple of Weeks Ago!

Since it's been announced, the show they were filming down at the ship was "American Ninja Warrior".

I don't watch this type of show because I'm not interested in it, but plenty of people do.

It was a MAJOR production for us, and parking was a mess.

Getting on and off the ship wasn't fun, either!

Thanks to "Big Stick Ops" for the picture! He was brave enough to go aboard that week, while us timid radio guys stayed home....

Field Day Preps and Father's Day

As I told my wife this afternoon, "I'm in Field Day Mode".

Reserved the trailer this morning, and got my laptop out and spent the afternoon updating all the software on it that needed updating.

I didn't do that last year, and wasted a couple of hours updating it "enough" that Windoze would quit squawking.

I also didn't set up all the equipment in the back yard, and test it, last year, so all the tales of woe I had were brought on myself by me. I had taken incompatible equipment (rotator motors didn't match the control box), left things at home because I'd taken them out of the "Field Day" equipment boxes that I thought were all properly packed, and other errors caused by not doing a trial run before declaring the equipment good-to-go.

That's NOT going to happen this year, as I'll be operating my satellite station on the Iowa, and if that operation doesn't go smooth. I'll have a serious amount of egg on my face, and our Amateur Radio Association will look kind of stoopid!

SO.....tomorrow morning all the stuff will be dragged out of the garage and gone through, sorted out, and checked. Saturday morning I'll start assembling the antennas, preamps and power leads, coaxial cables, and rotors. Generally takes me about two hours the first time, as I find my tools and the specific hardware used to hold it all together.

Sunday is Father's Day, so I'm going to have fun, and if the antenna system is put together, it only takes about 30 minutes to set up the radio and laptop, and I'll operate for a bit.

Sunday afternoon we're going down to the Iowa for "BBQ's and Brews", their Father's Day celebration.

That leaves Sunday through Tuesday as the shake-down run. Wednesday is "Grey Radio Day" on the Iowa for me, and Thursday is pick up the trailer and dismantle the station. Friday my son is coming over to help me load up, and then down to the ship, lug the equipment aboard, and set it up. We'll light it all off Friday for the smoke test, and then Field Day starts Saturday at 1100 local.

I really want to be ready for the first satellite to come over the horizon this year, unlike last year when I really didn't get operating until late Saturday afternoon!

"Music Under The Guns" on the Battleship IOWA

Almost forgot to post this.

Last Saturday we had a "Volunteer Recruitment Fair" where prospective volunteers came and talked to representatives from all the various departments and groups to see if they'd like to join the crew and help with the ship.

I was sitting in for the leader of our "Gray Radio Group" who was on vacation, and met a lot of people who were definitely interested in joining the crew and working on the ship.

After the fair was over, my wife came down to the ship to join me for the "Music Under The Guns" program.

The Iowa runs several very low-cost ($10 or less per person) programs that include music, movies, and other events.

This month was music, and we had the tribute band "Fortunate Son"  playing for us from 1430 to 1700.

I've seen these guys before, and they're great. See them if you ever have the chance to do so. You'll really enjoy them!

And yes, they literally played "under the guns", with the stage set up just aft of Turret #3!

"Electric" V-8 Engine

Pretty clever...

It's one of those "What If...." scenarios where the thinking goes "What if I replaced the internal combustion mechanism (pistons driven by expanding gas) with something else that pushed the connecting rods down to turn the crankshaft?".


See for yourself.....

Rifle Ammo - - Then and Now

My 1000 rounds of 223 came in today, and I went and picked them up. I got a good deal on PMC from our friends at Bulk Ammo, and since the rifle/carbine class I'm taking on Sunday said to bring 100 rounds, and I know I'll be shooting this rifle a lot, I popped and bought the case.

As I was bringing it in from the car, I realized I still had a 50 Cal ammo can full of 30-06 surplus that I got a few weeks ago from the folks at Midway so I could properly feed my M1 Garand.

 

This is British surplus ammo specifically loaded for the M1 Garand, made in the late 1960's in Pakistan, and has gotten very good to excellent customer reviews on the Midway website.

The first lot I bought smelled really musty, just like the reviews have said, but this second lot doesn't stink at all. I'll probably buy more, as "MIL SPEC" M1 Ball ammo doesn't exactly grow on trees anymore, and it's good practice ammo.

I'll save my CMP Hornady ammo for those times when I really need accuracy. And yes, I'll compare the two at the range to see how much sight adjustment I need to do, and keep the info with the rifle.


Since my wife isn't as gunny as most of my readers, I thought she'd be interested in seeing how "front line" rifle ammunition has changed over the years. So, I plopped a couple of rounds of each down on the table, and took a few pix.

First, the 30-06. I remember my Dad telling me this stuff could shoot through two palm trees, and still take out a Japanese solder at 300+ yards.

Pretty impressive stuff. 174gr bullet, traveling at 2650 ft/sec, and producing around 2700 ft-lbs of muzzle energy.

Definitely hits hard!

Then I showed her a "typical" 556/223 round:

This particular PMC round has a 55gr bullet, loaded to produce about 3200 ft/sec, and delivering around 1250 ft-lbs of energy.


Here's the two side by side:

When she held the "Then and Now" rounds in her hand she was astounded at what our troops are carrying these days.

HEY!......I am NOT bad-mouthing the 5.56x45 round, so don't go there!

It is what it is, and our troops still have the 308 round for when things get really tough, but since this is the first time that I've ever put the two rounds side-by-side, I can now understand the furor that occurred when the M16 was first put into service.

And as much as I value my Garand, I know I'm going to really enjoy my M&P15.

Battleship Iowa Wefax Reception Update

For those that have asked about the problems I was having receiving weather fax transmissions using our Signalink and fldigi, I found the problem today, and "fixed" it.

Turns out there was a sample-rate mismatch between what Windows was using for the Signalink USB Audio Codec, and the settings in fldigi.

The settings Windows uses for "Recording" is normally something like 2 channel, 16-bit 44.1khz, the same as it uses for "CD Quality" audio playback, which makes sense since most consumers would want to record something that they could burn to CD and play.

After doing a Google session, and experimenting in fldigi by watching the signal "quality" in the waterfall display, I decided to switch to 2-channel, 16-bit, 48kHz, which Windows calls "DVD Quality".

This made the waterfall look much better as far as Signal-to-Noise ratio, but I still couldn't decode anything.

Somehow, I had it stuck in my mind that regardless of what Windows was using, the Signalink was using something else and passing the data directly to fldigi.

UH.....no, that's not how it works.

As soon as I went into the "Modems" setting on fldigi, and set the rate to 48000, I started getting picture decoding, and now we're getting usable weather maps.


Why didn't I have this trouble here at my home station? Well, I'm not using a Signalink on my Flex Radio 5000.

Since the "radio" is running on the same PC that the fldigi software is, I don't need an additional hardware box to digitize the audio from the Flex, and feed it to the program. The audio stays in the digital domain from the "radio" directly to the program using a pair of Virtual Serial Ports, connected together with a Virtual Serial Cable.

And in setting up the two ports and their "cable", I set the bit rate to be the same, so "it just worked".

Just one of the pitfalls of having one foot in the Analog Domain, and the other in the Digital Domain, I guess!


And for those that have asked about why we weren't on for Museum Ships Weekend.....


Well, we had to cancel at the last minute. There was a major film project for an upcoming TV program that resulted in the ship being pretty much shutdown for that complete weekend, as well as the entire week following.

Parking was a major hassle as the parking lot was used for the filming of the event (the ship was basically a backdrop), and access to and from the ship was severely restricted.

We talked with the Museum Ships people, and they would have allowed  us to operate from shore, BUT...we had to be in sight of the ship to do it.

That would have meant operating "mobile" from on-street parking, or finding another lot in sight of the ship where we could overnight with a generator,

It would have been just too much hassle, so we requested the Museum Ships people remove us from the list.

It's kind of a bummer because we were going to use this as a "full-up" test for Field Day, but the welfare of the Iowa comes first, so we accepted it without any bad feelings. They've been so good to us, that we have absolutely no reason to complain about missing a weekend "playing radio"!

2014 Cameron Airshow

A buddy sent me the link, and there's some pretty neat stuff going on.

Some of it gives me a headache just watching it....

AR Type Rifle Magazine Recommendations?

WELL.....I "pulled the trigger" and bought an AR type rifle.

Specifically, I bought an S&W M&P15T.

This is very similar to my setpson's rifle that I shot a lot last July in Colorado, but has the (STOOOPID!) Kaliforniastan "Bullet Button" instead of a standard magazine release, a slightly heavier barrel, and some Picatinny rails with "flip up" iron sights in place of the forgrip.

Both my wife (who's pretty recoil-adverse) and myslef really enjoyed shooting her son's M&P15 while we were there. She was surprised how little recoil there was, and I was surprised how fast I could acquire, and hit, targets using the red dot sight on it.

I was ringing the steel no problem at 200 yards, which absolutely floored me.

This one comes with 3 snap-on handguards to use on the 90*, 180* and 270* positions so you won't chew your hands up on the rail in case you don't have any TactiCool stuff mounted on them.

I might put a weapon light on it, and will definitely get a Red Dot for it.

It comes with ONE 10-round magazine, and before I take the rifle class I signed up for, I'd like to get several more.

SO......being a complete "AR Rookie", what do you guys recommend? I've read that Magpul makes good magazines, and the guy at the gun shop said C Products also makes good ones, and to stay away from ThermoMold.

How'd I miss This? Grace Lee Whitney Passed Away May 1st

Holy smokes....Yeoman Rand is no longer with us!

I ran across this looking at some webpage, and went to the UPI page that had the article.

RIP, Grace.

More about here carreer here and here.

One of here first TV appearances was as "Carla" in the Outer Limtis episode titled "Contolled Experiment". Even watching that episode after "Star Trek" had beem on, I still didn't realize it was her until I watched the credits.

Receiving and Decoding WeFAX (Weather Facsimile) Transmissions

Another "new" project popped up yesterday on the Iowa during our monthly Radio Guys meeting. Our guy who's rebuilding the CEC (Combat Engaement Center for the civvies) brought up the fact that eventually the Meterology Office on the Bridge Deck will be included on the tour route, and wouldn't it be nice to have a working weather fax on display.

This came up because I was explaining the PC, interface, and software I installed for the Amateur Radio Group to use, and showing how it's used to decode "digital" transmissions.

The most popular digital mode on the Ham bands is called PSK31, and is a narrow-band method of sending text, so you can have a keyboard-to-keyboard chat with another Ham.

The software I like to use is call "FLDIGI", and runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. The nice thing about it is that it comes with software modems to decode literally DOZENS of digital transmissions.

There's nothing showing in the screenshot below as I don't have a radio hooked up to my Linux box right now, but I've mentioned FLDIGI before in other posts.

Here's a Windoze screenshot of FLDIGI receiving a weather report. The Signal-to-Noise ratio of this frequency is worse than the weather map, which explains the "snowy" image, and lack of correct side-to-side sync. This can be corrected in the program after the broadcast is recorded.

 
For a webapge giving the "Sights-and-Sounds" of the digital modes, head on over here. There are many other digital modes used, and this is just a small sample of them.

SO.....after the meeting yesterday, I looked up some wefax frequencies, and tuned in the Pt. Reyes Station Coast Guard broadcast, and tried to decode it. I'm not sure what was wrong, but we weren't able to decode an image. Since I've never tried that mode before, I suspect it might be operator error, and left it at that.

This morning I fired up my Windoze PC and my Flex 5000, and tuned in the same station. To my surprise, and using the defaults in the program, I was able to receive the image shown below.

This has me scratching my head, so I'll have to spend some time on the Iowa by meyself to see what's not configured correctly.

"Barn Find" P-51 Mustang from Torrance, CA Up For Auction

Interesting story on this one. It appears to have been bought by a man in Playa Del Rey (up by LAX) in 1973, and stored at Torrance (Zamperini Field, TOA) in a hangar, and work started on it. The man passed away in 2004 without really getting much done on it, and it went to his wife, who passed away in 2012.

The attorneys for the estate are now putting it on the auction block, and it's come to light as a 1970's era, unrestored warbird.

Read more about it here, and here, and here, and more here.

Memorial Day on the Battleship Iowa

We had food trucks, radio and TV stations, Talking Heads and Politicians, military vehicles and a fly-by, live music, fun and games for the kiddies, and thousands of people.

But most importanly, we had Vets.

We had Vets from WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom, and all the other battles, named and un-named, that have happened since December 7th, 1941.

We had Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, Enlsted and Officers, and others.....

And we thanked them all.....

And thank you all for your service, wherever, whenever, and whatever it was.

God Bless You all.......

"The Moving Wall" to be in SoCal Over The Weekend

Specifically, it will be at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes.

I'm going to stop by tomorrow and pay my respects.

300k Page Hits.....

Which aint diddly squat compared to some of you, but then my writing eloquence can't hold a candle to most of you.

I'm just glad I've met everybody here, and we consider ourselves friends.

US Navy/Marine Corps MARS Program To End

"MARS" in this case means "Military Auxiliary Radio System", a radio network of non-military stations (Hams) allowed to communicate on military frequencies.

I was encouraged to join the MARS network, but the requirements for actually operating on-the-air are pretty stringent as to the amount of time required, so I declined the invitation.

MARS station have very unique callsigns, as in the case of the Battleship Iowa, NNN0CIA. No idea how we managed the "CIA" suffix, but it always gets a chuckle when radio people visit the Comm Center on the Iowa.

Besides handling routine traffic such as "Health and Welfare" messages, the MARS network is also a complete stand-alone emergency radio network with direct connection to the US Military. And the MARS stations get activated for the Armed Forces Day Cross-Band Test, which allows Amateur radio operators to communicate directly with the military radio stations by transmitting in the Amateur Radio bands, while listening outside the Amateur bands to the military frequencies.

We also have a MARS digipeater for the MARS packet radio network (yes, packet is still alive!) that get excellent coverage due to the antenna being on the top of the ship which gives an unobstructed radio view of the coast line from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Back in 2009 the Navy/Marine Corps segment of MARS was almost shut down, but a change from "Affiliated" to "Auxiliary" status saved the money, and the Navy/Marine Corps segment of the program.

Well, this time it's for real. From The ARRL Letter:

US Navy-Marine Corps MARS Program to End: The US Department of Defense is phasing out the US Navy-Marine Corps Military Auxiliary Radio System http://www.navymars.org/ (MARS) program. Its operational mission will transition to the other MARS service branches by the end of September. MARS volunteers are Amateur Radio operators who provide auxiliary or emergency communications to local, national, and international emergency and safety organizations, as an adjunct to normal communications.
"The intent of the transition is to best align the program to support national mission requirements," the announcement said. Chris Jensen of Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Atlantic (NCTAMS LANT) told ARRL that the Navy no longer has any service-specific requirements for Navy-Marine Corps MARS and is working within DoD to transition the program into Army and Air Force MARS by September 30.
The announcement encouraged current Navy-Marine Corps MARS members and clubs to submit applications to the US Army MARS or US Air Force MARS programs as soon as possible.
"The US Navy greatly appreciates the thousands of MARS volunteers, past and present, who have been integral to the success of MARS," the announcement concluded.
An individual very familiar with the MARS program said the change was not unexpected and came to a head as the US Strategic Command embraced Army MARS as the lead branch for contingency communication and Air Force MARS began partnering with the US Army program on the operations side.
"The Army and Air Force MARS branches have an obvious role in providing contingency communications for the 50 states," said the individual, who preferred not to be identified by name. "Members are everywhere 'on the ground,' and experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has proven the tactical usefulness of HF on land. There was no similar role for the landlocked membership of Navy-Marine Corps MARS."
He said the MARS program can use all the volunteers it can attract. Read more http://www.arrl.org/news/us-navy-marine-corps-mars-program-to-end.

The Army and Air Force segments will continue to exist and operate, but "Navy MARS" and "Marine MARS" will be gone forever as of 30 September.

We'll probably be assigned a new callsign for the Iowa, and the digipeater will get reprogrammed, but it's good that at least a portion of MARS will continue to exist.

Battleship Iowa Transmitter Progress **We're Getting There!**

Well, good news!

I took my accurate, calibrated, LP-100A Digital Vector RF Wattmeter in today, and we re-ran the tests on the transmitters today using the LP-100A rather than the built-in panel meters.

We also wanted to make sure each exciter was outputting its 100 milliwatts (+20dBm) of rated power.

First, a little background....

The Iowa originally had 11 transmitters; 10 on shock mounts in a racked arrangement, two high and 5 wide, "odd" units on the top, and the "even" units below them, with #11 sitting by itself at the far left end of the rack mounts.

Numbers 2 and 8 were missing from the ship when she came out of the reserve fleet, leaving us with nine units. Three of the nine were stripped of usable parts in the PA (Power Amplifier) assemblies, leaving us with six more-or-less intact units. We might be able to "mix-and-match"  the three partially stripped ones to make a seventh unit, or just keep them "As Is", or as a possible source of "spares", as we really don't have any reason in the world to have seven functioning transmitters!

Originally the "need" was to have two, fully function transmitters, one being the primary unit, and the other being it's back-up, for "Special Event" use, such as the Military/Amateur Crossband Event, or perhaps Museum Ships Weekend.

As of today, two of the units has an exciter with 100mW (+20dBm) or more (+23dBm) of drive power, and one exciter is low on output, only doing 50 mW (+17dBm).

The two with the "good" exciters easily exceeded 1200 Watts output ( ! ), while the one with the "low" exciter did about 800 Watts output.

This is significantly different that what the panel meters read, by a factor of 2 to 3!

And we have another transmitter that appears to be good, as far as the PA Plate Voltage and Current go, but with a dead exciter that only puts out about .5dBm, a little over a milliwatt.

And it took quite a load off us as to trying to figure out where the "missing" RF Power was going. It wasn't "missing", it just wasn't being measured!


And on the Ham Radio side, I installed, and got operational, a Signalink USB interface box on our Kenwood TS-850 HF radio. As soon as I finish my homebrew soundcard interface, we'll have two stations capable of digital operation on such modes as SSTV, PSK31, RTTY, and other modes.

Panoramic Views of Battleship Iowa Internal Spaces

These have been updated again, with some new areas to virtually explore.

I've seen most of these spaces, and the photography is excellent. These panoramas are actually better than viewing them in person, as the lighting is much better.

It's still quite a thrill to actually visit these spaces, but the panoramas bring out more detail than you'd normally notice, and you can spend as long as you want looking at things.

Battleship Iowa Panoramic Views

Small Block Chevy Time-Lapse Rebuild

This is pretty neat!

They start with an oily, crusty "lump" of an engine, tear it down, bore, hone, and deck the block, rebuild the rods, put hardened seats in the heads, mill them, and then put it all back together all shiny and pretty.

I've lost count on how many times I've done this with Chevy, Ford, and Pontiac V8s, and an unknown number of 4 and 6 cylinder engines!

Nothing real high-performance, as it started as a 2-bbl, a two-bolt block with a cast crank and pressed-in rocker studs, but I'll bet it purrs like a kitten now....

Best Prefilght Ever by a Southwest Flight Attendant

You've probably seen this before, but it's still funny!

HackRF One First Use

Well, I was able to get it running on Windoze using SDR Console V2.2 (the olde V1.5 will NOT work), and SDR#.

No joy with HDSDR, at least not with any of the DLL's I tried, and I'm not about to risk trashing my Windows PC by trying to get GNURadio to run on it.

And I was finally able to get it to run on Gqrx on my Linux box by removing, and then reinstalling, Gqrx. Gqrx uses a block of code (gr-osmosdr) to communicate with the device, and if that code isn't on your machine when you install Gqrx, it won't detect and use it if you install it after Gqrx.

Once I did the "RnR" to Gqrx, the HackRF showed up in the list of drivers to use, and it's running happily right now, and I'm listening to KLOS with it.

The more I delve into the documentation (what there is of it), the more I realize that the only way you'll be able to make this little puppy sit up and shake, and roll over and bark, is to use it with GNURadio. ALL of the "Plug and Play" software out there treats it pretty much the same as a "$10 USB Dongle", and can't take advantage of the flexibility of what GNURadio can do with it.

And it's still just an 8-bit receiver, like a $10 dongle, even though it can generate some RF as a transmitter. Read the link to get a basic understanding of 8, 12, or 16-bits in this context.

Is it worth $300?

That's a tough question to answer. If you want something to plug-and-play, then you're probably better off with a $10 dongle, or one of the better ones available out there. It will plug right in to a Windows or Linux PC, and work with minimum effort.

If you have the time to spend to learn how to set up a GNURadio "definition", AND you understand what you want to do, then this might be for you.

And if you're really serious about a DIY SDR for whatever purpose, you'll find other choices out there that may suit your intended use better.

I haven't decided yet if I'll keep this little guy, or eBay it. I don't really need it for anything I'm doing, but it's a great platform to learn GNURadio on.

HackRF One Arrived Today

For those that don't know, a HackRF One is a small, Software-Defined Radio, meaning that it lacks most of the hardware in a "regular" Superheterodyne radio (mixers, local oscillators, IF filters, etc), and performs many of the normal radio functions in software, using Digital Signal Processing routines.

I've been on-the-fence about buying one of these since they came out (like I need another SDR in the house!), but a recent post over at The Silicon Graybeard's place pushed me over the edge.

My previous SDR experiments I've posted here have been about using the "$20 USB Dongles" to do things like receive pictures from the APT weather satellites, and the "FUNCube Pro" dongle, which is around $175 these days, but offers vastly superior performance compared to the "pocket change" USB dongles.

The HackRF One module goes for around $300, plus shipping and any accessories you order with it, and it will be interesting to see how the receive section compares to the FUNCube Pro + dongle I have.

One of the more interesting things about the HackRF is that it will also transmit, albeit at very low power levels, typically from +5dBm, about 3.2mW, to +15dBm, about 32mW.

I wasn't making much progress with it until I finally got some "permissions" set right so a normal user could access the USB port it runs on, but now I've done my first "Hello World" with it, using GNURadio Companion, an application that generates Python code to interface to GNU Radio, and run the radio from the flow-chart style elements you enter in to it.

Here's a screenshot of my first experiment:

The FFT Plot is a slice of the local FM radio spectrum out here in La-La Land.

I can't take any credit for coming up with this, as I learned how to do this from watching the excellent tutorials on the HackRF website.

I've always been put off by GNU Radio, as I've only tried to run it from the Command Line, and always had pretty mediocre results. It's one of those programs that's too configurable, and if you don't understand what you're doing, your results will be disappointing.

Enter the GNU Radio Companion, and now that I've viewed a few of the tutorials, one of those little light bulbs went "CLICK!" in my head, and I'll probably be able to make some progress.

For being FOSS, GNU Radio is a full-featured, industrial-strength developer environment for doing SDR experiments with a staggering array of hardware.

And now that I've started learning how to use the GNU Radio Companion, I might make use of GNU Radio in a much more efficient manner.

Rats! More Plumbing Problems.....

WELL....the plumbing repair didn't work out. My wife started doing laundry last week, and the water started bubbling up again.

We had our plumber friend come over, and he installed another clean-out tee at the garage, and had a friend of his come over with the BIG power snake, and snake the line from the garage to past where it tees into the drain from the house.

They didn't really find any obstructions, and the line is clear from the garage to the street.

Final diagnosis is that the pipe is running up hill from the garage to the house clean-out tee, and water doesn't run uphill very well. It probably got in this condition from land movement and earthquakes over the seventy years since the pipe was installed when they built the house in 1942.

SO......about half the digging is done, and there's another 20 or so feet to go to get to the junction. Monday morning they'll be back out here to finish digging out the old clay-pipe line, and replace it with new ABS pipe, with the correct downhill slope to it, and backfill the trench.

And I was just getting the back yard to look decent.

At least we're getting a big break on the cost of the job, which usually runs about $100/linear foot of pipe replaced.

Since these guys are friends of out good friend, the whole job will "only" cost $1500 instead of $4000 for 40 feet of line replaced.

Oh, the joys of being a homeowner!

240th Anniversary of The Battles of Lexington and Concord

A.K.A. "The Shot Heard 'Round The World".

And today is also the anniversaries of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the raid at Waco, and the #2 turret explosion on the USS Iowa.

Thanks to The Survival Blog for jogging my memory on theses events.

Not much else to post today, just waiting for the Long Beach Grand Prix to start......

C-17 Tooling Up For Auction

Well, we all knew this day would come. Just sad to  see it come so soon.

Full article here.

Busy Day on the Iowa

We had a special tour of 45 people who went through the USC Naval ROTC program today.

Some were retired, some were active duty, and all had a good time.

Only about half of them wanted to see the Engineering spaces and the Radio areas, so we broke them into three groups of seven, and rotated the groups through the Comm Center on the main Deck, the Transmitter Room down on Broadway, and the Aft Main/Secondary Plot, which is where the Ford Mark-8 and Mark-1 Fire Control Rangerkeepers (computers), and the Stable Elements are located.

Last week we had a group from a local radio club do the same special tour, and if interest keeps up, it *might* get added to the list of "Special Tours" that are offered.

No "official" word on it yet, but we're hoping.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we're giving the same tour to a VIP, a Radioman who served on the USS Missouri during WWII, and since there's only going to be him, myself, and another tour guide, I'm taking my camera!

It was just too busy today and last Saturday for me to be taking any pictures, but tomorrow will be different.

The Aft Main/Secondary Plot is pretty unique, as they took special care of it during storage in the reserve fleet. The paint inside the spaces looks fresh, the floors are super clean, and it's amazingly well preserved.

I'm going to go charge my camera batteries now and get things set out on the dining table so it'll be "In My Face" tomorrow morning. I really want to get some pictures!

The Most Dangerous Man In The World

Bill smacks another one over the wall....

Friday Again?

Gee...just realized I haven't posted anything in a week.

Been pretty busy here, with both Iowa stuff and "Homeowner" stuff.

After spending both Saturday and Sunday on the Iowa giving tours and talking with WWII vets, I figured I'd have Monday to unwind.

WRONG!

The main drain line from our garage, where the laundry is located, out to the street broke, and had to be repaired. The house was built in the early 1940's, and they used fired clay soil pipe, rather than cast iron. The pipes just slip-fit together, and during 70 years of earthquakes and ground movement, they start to leak a bit. Trees, having water seeking roots, look at this as a new found oasis, and come running.

Sure enough, tree roots invaded the drain line, and grew so much they cracked the pipe. Every time we did laundry, water would bubble up through the ground when the washer emptied.

A few years before I met my wife, she had the same problem with the drain from the house to the street, and had most of the pipe repaired, and they added a clean-out tee where the pipe comes out of the house.

Fortunately for us, the guy who lives across the street is a plumber, and he offered to fix the mess if I helped him.

SO.......Monday morning I'm out there swinging a pick and shovel to uncover the pipes. Once we had them dug out, it was easy to see where the root entered, breaking the clay pipe, and exited, breaking the pipe again.

All of the houses in this tract started out as two bedroom, one bath, 950 square foot "starter homes", and they were all built identically, so our plumber friend knew exactly where all the pipes ran, saving us the time of digging in the blind to find them.

The piece of root we pulled out was about 6 feet long, and two inches in diameter, so it had been growing in there for quite some time.

After cutting out the sections of broken pipe with a neat tool that looked a lot like the exhaust pipe cutter I have, he replaced the sections with ABS plastic pipe and rubber couplings.

We then refilled the holes, and now the drain works as it should.

He only asked for $300 to do the work, but we paid him $400 because to us, it was worth the extra money, and he's a genuinely Good Guy.

I shudder to think of what it would have cost us if we just "called a plumber" to fix it!

This coming Saturday and Sunday will be two more days on the Iowa. Saturday we have a group of Naval ROTC people coming, but newly minted and retired, and a few of them want to see the radio and transmitter rooms, and then the same on Sunday, but with some WWII vets who were Radiomen on other ships, including the USS Missouri.

Should be another great day on the Iowa!

Two Days Upcoming on the Iowa.....

I'll be there all day tomorrow to escort the Northrup-Grumman (formerly TRW) Amateur Radio Club around, and then for special visitor we're having Sunday.

He's a retired Radioman from the Missouri, and is taking part in the Iowa's Oral History program where we're attempting to get as many WWII vets on tape as possible.

He made a request to see the Radio and Transmitter Rooms, and we're more than happy to acommodate him.

And I'll bet I pick up more than few tips on the transmitters and couplers!

Top Ten "Miami Vice" Musical Scenes

Still one of my favorite shows.

Enjoy!

Carpet Project Finished

WELL.....we finally finished getting the living room rearranged and back together after tearing it apart for the carpet guys.

I was amazed how fast they got the furniture out of the house, the old carpeting and padding removed, the new carpeting installed, and the furniture back in.

And in the process of reassembling the home theater stuff, and my wife's computer desk, I took all the equipment outside and blew the dust out of it. Then I cleaned all the gear with some "Endust for Electronics", and proceeded to put everything back together, labeling all of the cables.

A bigger ordeal than I thought it would be, but the new carpet looks great, walks even better, and the whole house looks brighter now that we got rid of the old blue carpet.

I add some pix here later.....

Video of the Last Decommissioning of the USS Iowa

Found this through a crew newsletter I get.

It's converted from a VHS tape, so the quality isn't what we're used to today, but it's a fascinating video.

Enjoy!

New Carpet Today

Arrrgh.......

Been busy as a one-armed paper hanger the last few days getting the living room and dining room stripped out so the carpet installers can do their thing today.

They'll remove all the furniture for us, but all the "other" stuff had to be out so they don't break anything "fragile".

First off was taking the Home Theater Center apart and moving all the gear, then the wife's curio cabinet had to be emptied and unscrewed from the wall, the DVD racks had to be emptied and unscrewed from the wall, all the book cases had to be emptied and unscrewed from the walls, and her office/computer work area had to be taken offline, and all the gear removed. This is also my #2 radio operating position, so the 2 Meter/70 centimeter radio and scanner had to be disconnected and moved, along with the UPS units, the weather PC, and the FiOS router. I put the FiOS router in the "Network Closet" here in the radio room, and patched to coax from the Verizon ONT into it, and plugged in just the network cable for this room.

I'm still not sure how the carpet installers are going to handle where the coax/network cables come up through the floor, but the rep who was here the other day said they do it all the time, and it shouldn't be a problem. The "good" thing is that one of the places is behind the wife's "work" desk, and the other is behind the cabinet where the Home Theater stuff is mounted.

1032 local time, and they haven't called to confirm yet.......

They arrived about 1045. It's now 1445, and they're just putting the furniture back in place.

Then I can start reassembling things......

Looks nice, and my wife is very pleased.

"The X-Files" is Coming Back!

Supposed to start filming this summer, and will star David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, reprising their roles in a 6 episode miniseries.

This is probably my all-time favorite TV series. I didn't care too much for the two movies, as they were just not "connected enough" to the TV series for me.

It will be very interesting to follow this, and I can hardly wait for it to air.

One of Old Blue Eyes' Best

Ran across this while looking for something else.

I'm Still Here....Just Been Busy!

We've been working on getting all the HF-capable antennas on the Iowa sorted out, and hand-over-hand tracing coaxial cables around the ship.

We were able to get the autocoupler for the portside transmitting antenna hauled out of the transmitter room and mounted at the base of the whip, and as soon as we can figure out *where* the coax goes to, we'll do some low power testing with one of the original tarnsmitters.

In the picture below you can see the mounting rails for the autocoupler:

And with this shot from below the antenna, you can see the red insulating base, indicating it was a transmitting antenna:

And the starboard side whip has a blue base, indicating it was receive-only:

The cable for the starboard whip runs into a room off the flag bridge, where it was hooked to a receiver that we're told was used by the "spooks" for various signal interception duties.

Unfortunately, the Heliax cable feeding this one has broken from being repeatedly bent back and forth, so that's another "Let Jim fix it" item in the job jar!

The Leader Of The Free World

Gee....wonder who it is....

Meanwhile, Back In The CPO's Mess.......

One of the things we do on the Iowa is offer examinations for both commercial and Amateur radio licenses.

This past Wednesday, I found myself back down in the CPO's Mess area helping three young guys get their Marine Radio Operator's Permit for their jobs at one of the places out here in the L.A. Harbor area.

One of the things that's so interesting about the Iowa is the large amount of "Crew Art" painted in various spaces around the ship. I posted a lot of it a while back when I took the "Curator's Tour", which is a tour available to the public that takes you to a lot of the areas not on the current tour route.

Here's a funny one that I'm sure my Navy friends have seen before:

And in the CPO Lounge Area we have this one:

Along with this one on the adjacent bulkhead:

The deck flooring leading in to the lounge area has this nice tile work:

And on the door leading in is this warning:

In the mess area is this autograph from an original plank owner:

Thank you for your service, Chief!

And finally, from one of the hatches leading in to this area, MANY coats of paint:

Sorry for the crummy cellphone pix, but these were "spur of the moment", and I'm seriously considering taking my camera with me every time I go on board the Iowa.

I'm Blaming My Wife......

For this rotten cold I came down with starting yesterday morning.

Sore throat, headache, and my nose is running like a faucet with a blown washers in it.

And it's supposed to start raining Friday afternoon, and continue through Monday.

Where's my NyQuil.....I'm gonna hit the rack.......

The Last C-17 Is Being Assembled

Well, we all knew it was coming, but hearing about #279 rolling down the assembly line puts it in a new perspective.

I remember when they built the last 717 in 2006 (an MD-95/DC-9, really), and since I was working at Boeing at the time, we all stepped out of the office to watch it take off and fly away.

 It was the last commercial airliner to be built in Long Beach, ending a string that ran for over sixty years.

Mercedes Benz has taken over the Boeing facility on the East side of the Long Beach (LGB) airport, and supposedly Virgin Galactic will be building a small launch vehicle of some kind there.

I'm not sure what's going to happen over on the west side, where the C-17 facility is. Boeing has a large office complex on the East side of LGB, and there are many highly skilled workers on the program that will be available, so perhaps they'll keep parts of the facility going with upgrades and repairs for the C-17, or perhaps they'll do some F/A-18 work there.

Or, Boeing might follow the many, many businesses that just folded their tent, and left California for greener pastures, where the cost of living isn't so high, and the cost of doing business isn't stifled by a state government that can never seem to remove it's head from where the sun doesn't shine......

Yard Work and PC Work Today

Now that's dried out a bit (we got some rain over the weekend), I can finish up the back yard today. I have to finish the edging with my edger, and then get the weed whacker out to do the final trimming.

And then mix up some Roundup and spray the areas we're trying to keep clear.

I had a one gallon sprayer that came with a premix in it, but that ran out Friday afternoon. And then about 12 hours later we had the rain, so unfortunately, most of the Roundup washed away, and we still have some weeds along the driveway.

Roundup seems to work pretty well, as it "Kills The Root", and makes the dead stuff easier to rip out of the ground.

I've also used rock salt in the past with good results, but only use that where I don't want anything to grow, or to kill stumps. Just drill some 1" holes in the stump as deep as you can with a wood bit ("Paddle Bit"), and then fill the holes with salt. Add some water to get things started, and let Nature take over. Years ago, I bought some kind of chlorate compound from National Lumber (remember them?) that you did the same thing with, and then waited a couple of weeks. Once it was dry enough, you could light the stump with a propane torch, and it would start to burn, and continue burning, until the entire thing was gone. Pretty neat stuff, but I'm sure it's not available any more.

And on the PC front, I just finished up refurbishing a laptop and a desktop to take down to the Iowa for our Amatuer Radio use.

The desktop is a Core2 Quad running at 3GHz, with 8GB of memory (I remember when 8 Gig was a big hard disk!) and a clean installation of Windows 7 Professional. It also has an M-Audio "Audiophile 2496" soundcard that we'll be using with a SoftRock SDR receiver to use as a panadaptor for the Kenwood TS-850 that's our main SSB radio., along with a full suite of N3FJP software.

The laptop is an older Dell that somebody gave me that I added a bigger hard disk to, and maxed out the memory to 4GB, and installed Windows 7 Professional. We'll be using that on the "CW" station to do digital mode operation using the soundcard interface I built a while back.

I'll clean them up tonight and make sure all the updates are current, and lug them down to the Iowa Wednesday morning where we'll join them to the domain, and bring our station up a notch or two.