Ovide, K8EV, our “kid wrangler,” did his thing yesterday and we were able to get three kids on the air. Seven-year-old Jack was our first kid communicator; he spoke to K9IRO. Peter was our second, and Brian our third.  A good time was had by all.

We were very fortunate in that band conditions on 40m were very good. All three stations we talked to were 57 – 59, and no one had to strain to hear one another.

Tower Update
We’re making progress slowly, but surely on the tower project. Over the course of last week, I mounted all the lightning arrestors to the mounting plate that goes in the NEMA box. On Friday, Jack, Dave, and I lowered the tower and mounted the rotor plate and rotor. We mounted the thrust bearing, too, but after inspection, John decided that it needed some kind of cap to prevent water from pooling in it.

We’ve added a couple of new things to WA2HOM, most notably our new QSL display and we’ve finally gotten our maps framed and hung.

The QSL display is shown at right. What they did was to put a plexiglass frame over the railing separating the station from the ramp. This allows museum visitors to get a closer view of our QSL cards. Up near the desk, we have our DX QSL cards; down by the door to the shack, we have the domestic QSLs.

The maps are shown below. They are mounted on the wall opposite the shack door. We haven’t yet done this, but the plan is to put little dots on the maps to mark the locations of stations we’ve contacted. This will give our visitors a very visual indication of what we can do with ham radio. 

New Exhibits in Place
There are also a couple of new exhibits in place.  Joining the “see your voice on the oscilloscope” exhibit, is the Morse Code exhibit and the crystal radio exhibit. (I should have also taken pictures of those exhibits, but just didn’t for some strange reason.)

The Morse code exhibit features two ruggedized straight keys, one connected to an audio oscillator, the other connected to a telegraphy sounder. It’s kind of interesting to compare the two different sounds.

The Final Frontier
The last piece of the puzzle is the tower and beam.  I’m told that they’re making progress on this. Permits have been pulled and orders have been placed. I’m hoping that the beam will be up by the end of September.

Yesterday, down at the museum, we got a whole pack of Cub Scouts on the air, thanks to Ovide, K8EV, my ever-ambitious “kid wrangler.” No sooner had I managed to make a decent contact than he lassoed a group of five Cub Scouts from Detroit. Fortunately, conditions held out so that I could give them all a turn at the mike.

They must have liked it and told their buddies. About a half hour later, another group showed up. Fortunately, I was already in another QSO (with W3BEE), and he was gracious enough to talk to everyone in the second group.

W3BEE is a very interesting guy. As his vanity call implies, he’s a beekeeper as well as a ham. I’ve often thought about trying beekeeping—especially because of the bee crisis. He encouraged me to look into it further, noting that now is the time to start preparing for next year.

Yesterday, it was just me down at the museum. I made a couple of great contacts, though.

The first was with Fred, KI4XH. Fred was operating his Collins S-Line gear, and keying it with a bug. About halfway through the QSO, he switched over to a VibroKeyer single-lever paddle, keying a Hallicrafters HA-1 keyer.

The HA-1, or T.O. Keyer, was a commercialization of the vaccum-tube keyer designed by W9TO. in the 1950s. It occurred to me that maybe building one of these things is something that I could do with al the tubes that I have. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the schematic on the Net. There is an an article in the May 1959 issue of QST by W9TO, but this is for the first transistor keyer. If any of you have a schematic and can scan it for me, or can point me to where I can find it, I would appreciate it.

Titanic Duo
After making a couple of CW contacts, I thought I’d try making a phone contact. Tuning to 7220 kHz, I found our favorite frequency occupied by W0S, a special event station commemorating the sinking of the Titanic. W0S was operating from the Titanic Museum in Branson, MO. According to their website, “This event will commemorate the heroic efforts of Harold McBride and John ‘Jack’ Phillips as they sat at the Marconi radio in the Titanic sending the first ever SOS.” They’ll be on the air until 2200 UTC Sunday, April 11.

My last QSO was with W1T, a station that was also commemorating the sinking of the Titanic. I made the contact on 14.050 MHz. W1T was operating from somewhere in Maine. At first, I thought that perhaps this was a CW operation from W0S, but it was a completely separate operation. I was unable to find any information on the Net about this station, but they did give me QSL info, so I can get a card from them.

In searching the Net, I found a third special event station commemorating the Titanic. This is an operation of the Titanic Historical Society, which is located in the Springfield, MA area. If I’d known about this, I bet that I could have worked them. Maybe next year.