When Hobbies Cross

[Nels_Anderson]

As much as I love aviation and flight simming, I have other interests too.

 

My main hobby is Amateur Radio and some times it crosses over with aviation, which can be fun.

 

This week I'm participating in an annual Independence Day event:

 

http://www.13colonies.us/

 

I'm one of the designated Massachusetts colony stations that everyone else is trying to contact. So, my favorite contact today gave me this report:

 

"Location is Gulf of Mexico. Antenna is long wire at 30,000 feet. Station is Airbus."

 

So yes, an off-duty Airbus pilot, in flight, participating in our ham radio event. Fun!

[PhrogPhlyer]

2 hours ago, Nels_Anderson said:

"Location is Gulf of Mexico. Antenna is long wire at 30,000 feet. Station is Airbus."

Very cool and unique radio contact.

This can happen with HF radios on military aircraft. On two separate occasions I had an in-flight "issue" with a CH-46 and landed in the hills of Camp Pendleton CA. Using one of our "guard" HF frequencies, I called out to "any station on this frequency" in an attempt to get a phone patch back to the squadron maintenance personnel, On one occasion I got a response "this is Looking Glass." Not bad having an EC-135 play phone relay for you. On the other occasion, after I completed the phone patch, I asked what station had responded. It was AFB Thule Greenland. Approximately 2500 miles great circle.

[lnuss]

I'm not much of a contester, but one of the guys on our morning 40M net (he's in eastern Tennessee) got all thirteen in an hour and a half -- says usually it takes him 4+ hours.

 

On another note, one regular on our morning net flies a Falcon 7000 all over the world. During the Olympics he had a number of Colorado skiers that he took to various venues. We've occasionally talked when he was airborne, once shortly after takeoff from KBJC (northeast Denver/Boulder area). He generally has a lot of interesting stories when he gets back from one of these trips (sometimes a month or two). Another guy is a retired airline pilot, and three or four others are pilots (not all active). One even was in the same field in the Air Force (bomb nav systems on B47/B52) and trained at Lowry (Denver) just as I did.

 

On our weekly Amateur TV net one of the guys is a retired airline pilot. We've gotten together at breakfast a few times, and it gets interesting.e

There's several pilots who get together almost daily, around 1600Z, on 7158 for a chat, too.

 

And I've noticed time and again that a lot of pilots are also motorcycle riders and many are into music too. Lotsa common interests.

 

Thanks for posting this.

 

 

de N8GGG

[Nels_Anderson]

45 minutes ago, PhrogPhlyer said:

Very cool and unique radio contact.

This can happen with HF radios on military aircraft. On two separate occasions I had an in-flight "issue" with a CH-46 and landed in the hills of Camp Pendleton CA. Using one of our "guard" HF frequencies, I called out to "any station on this frequency" in an attempt to get a phone patch back to the squadron maintenance personnel, On one occasion I got a response "this is Looking Glass." Not bad having an EC-135 play phone relay for you. On the other occasion, after I completed the phone patch, I asked what station had responded. It was AFB Thule Greenland. Approximately 2500 miles great circle.

 

Very cool indeed, though not all that unique as I have contacted aircraft before. But it certainly made my day as it ties my interests together.

 

HF still works even in the satellite age, as you experienced. The military guys have some cool callsigns too, like "Looking Glass". There's also "Sky King". Those are tactical callsigns rather than FCC issued calls; like the callsign for the Pentagon is WAR; once a year they have an armed forces event where they operate cross-band and contact hams so somewhere in the past I have a contact with WAR

 

[Nels_Anderson]

26 minutes ago, lnuss said:

I'm not much of a contester, but one of the guys on our morning 40M net (he's in eastern Tennessee) got all thirteen in an hour and a half -- says usually it takes him 4+ hours.

 

de N8GGG

 

Hi Larry...Looking at your QRZ page you're a pretty active ham too I see. 13 Colonies is an event, not a contest, so everyone who makes a contact is a winner. There are some nice QSL cards and certificates available too; this year the previous guy retired to I got to design the K2H Massachusetts card which you can see here:

 

https://www.qrz.com/db/K2H

 

Your friend did remarkably well to get all the stations so fast. There is no coordination between the states so you never know when or where any state will be on the air. Given how HF propagation works the difficulty also varies a lot depending on where you live.

 

73 de K1UR

[lnuss]

Beautiful card, Nels - love it. I see you have some station pix on QRZ -- some neat stuff.

 

Yes, propagation plays a big part in a lot of things. With our daily net we certainly see a lot of differences in propagation over time (or even from one minute to the next), and with a net time starting at 1300Z (1200Z in winter) we certainly experience the day/night changeover, too. So we have a couple of nice tools to help us keep things going, such as Netlogger to keep track of checkins and what order to transmit in, as well as SDRs (Software Defined Radio) on the net (Pennsylvania, Georgia and Utah works for us) so that for a station that is weak that day we can still hear him via the net (or check in SWL if not near the shack).

 

73