Amateur Radio and Yachting

Got licensed in 2017: VA2SWP

K4WWI here.

Sheet, I can't remember mine.
Somehow I remembered my uncle's call.
I made tech in 1979.
Not touched it since.

Kind of surprised there's so few of us.

I was just cruising the web on Ham notes.
Seems the new licenses levels now are different from when I was involved.
I had to be proficient in CW, explain the different radio spectrum, who, when & how to access them.
Explain the hardware involved in radio transmission, reception and antenna theory.
Tech was the third (forth?) level and allowed you to use voice for the first time.
I got a 2 meter rig and bounced off of repeater stations all over N GA.
GARS, Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society was the local club.
There was a repeater on Stone Mountain that had an auto-patch system.
Before Cell Phones, you could touch tone dial land lines from your car.
Like VHF ch 28, everybody could listen in on your traffic but quick calls were cool.

Oh, something else, that I was checking on, I had to renew every ten years.
Oh,, ah,, er,, Well.. I'm not re-newable anymore.

So, I'm not an amateur any more.
I'm a boater.
Jack of all trades, Master of some.

I still have a 11 Meter AM/SB rig boxed up.
VFO, lollipop (D104) and nice heater.
Old SBE equipment. From the mid 70s

For y'all that don't understand that, It's outlawed CB equipment (10-30).
Saving it for Alas Babylon .

WD8CWL General class license. Had to take code test at FCC test office. Never got around to upgrading to Extra Class. Haven’t been active for several years.
Had a Novice license and building kit radios in elementary school. Long, long ago.

Ah, HeathKit crystal sets during elementary school.
My grandfather would keep me busy during the summers with all these learning kits.
Yes, Long,, Long ago..

Any of that learning kit stuff still available?

I've revised the link above to direct to a better site about the Bouvet expedition.

Also, there's a YouTube vid available:
https://www.youtube.com/live/b4blDDQQ1JQ?feature=share&t=997
(Fast forward to 16:37 for discussion about the yacht they chartered for the trip.)

These are some hardcore DXpedition guys!

When I read about / see what some of these guys achieve it makes me want to upgrade my license and get a nice HF base station for home. Municipal by-laws are pretty restrictive on towers/antennas though, so I wonder if I would be worth the trouble.

https://shop.heathkit.com/shop

I hung a DiPole system thru my apartment when I was in Atlanta.. Copper wires stapled to the ceiling. Worked fair.
Idea came from a kid that had turning elements (beams) in his attic.

I later helped a guy assemble an early 10' TV Sat dish in his attic also.
That worked like a champ.

Then,, Then,, females and a career job ruined everything.
Then more, I got a boat.

On a day like today, bad weather day, It could be cool to pull out one of those lil kits and build an electronic rain detector or listen in on some far away voice,, the UT clock signal.

Yes. Built Heathkit receivers, transmitters and later big amplifiers later. I lived in Stone Mountain in early 1980s and had a 40 meter vertical in back yard then. Don’t know if it would be allowed now.

Understand the girls and then boats distracting ham radio though.

Worse yet, a job.
Hate it when that happened..

Remember;
Even a bad day on the boat, fishing maybe,
Is better than any day at work..

No job.... No boat.

Don’t you hate it when reality raises it’s ugly head?

HAM Radio Team Reaches World’s Most Remote Island
John Konrad

February 10, 2023

By John Konrad (K5HIP) Last week, after a long and treacherous voyage, a team of amateur radio operators arrived on the world’s most remote island, Bouvet Island. Using the callsign 3Y0J, they are now transmitting a variety of signals, including Morse code, digital modes, and voice transmissions, in an effort to reach out to other amateur radio operators around the world. The expedition’s goals are simple: to contact as many amateur radio stations as possible from a remote location.

A dependent territory of Norway, Bouvet Island is an uninhabited subantarctic volcanic island located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote island in the world, situated approximately 900 nautical miles south-southwest of the coast of South Africa and 1,400nm north of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. The remoteness of this island makes radio signals originating from it very rare.

The 3Y0J team worked hard for two years to raise the estimated $650,000 for their DXpedition. They received donations from individuals, corporations, and amateur radio organizations around the world. Additionally, the Northern California DX Foundation (NCDFX) awarded them a grant of $100,000 to charter the sailing yacht S/V Marama. The yacht was designed by Dominique Presles and constructed with aluminum by N2A shipyard in St Nazaire. It was inspected by Bureau Véritas. While sailing, some of the team members used their own callsigns and added /MM to them for HF-band activities.

The official expedition website includes a wealth of engineering diagrams and information on setting up communication systems in remote parts of the world.

“Amongst other, we quite recently attended a climbing course to prepare for the rough vertical 90 degree climbing to be expected at Bouvet” wrote the co-leaders of the expedition. “This knowledge will enable us to safely rescue an injured operator from the camp. Next week we prepare for attending a glacier course to train for a 300m glacier crossing at the Bouvet glacier. This comes after engaging with former Norwegian Polar Institute employees that have visited Bouvet more than 60 times.”

As of their latest update the team has already made contact with nearly 7,000 radio stations around the world. Ships interested in adding this most unusual radio link into their official logbooks make contact via the frequencies and schedules published on their website.

The expedition is taking place in memory of Norwegian Polar Institute scientist John Snuggerud and NASA astronaut Captain Charles E. Brady, US Navy (N4BQW).

The Garmin inReach link to track the Marama is : https://share.garmin.com/3y0j?fbclid=IwAR1sidCR_36Mhr3lfB_BgQih2WHczKn6cy9aTdFF9uZZOl5Dcwqrro4f-Dg

Last I read the expedition was packing up today (02/14/23). They were out of fuel to power the camp, and the weather was not cooperating... high winds have prevented them from erecting the taller antennas.

So apparently there's been some backlash to the Bouvet team. It seems that there are entitled whingers in the ham community... same as every other community online.

There's some good info about the effort out forward though, along with some media uploaded from the island.