Battleship New Jersey Amateur Radio Station (BNJARS)

2004  ACTIVITY  PAGE

| FISTS Winter Sprint | Commissioning Day 2004 | 4 Sisters Reunion | Museum Ship Weekend 2004 | 
| JOTA Oct 2004 |

FISTS Winter Sprint - Feb. 14, 2004

Feb 14 was a busy weekend for BNJARS. We had our quarterly meeting in the morning and work parties were busy for most of the day on various projects. But, some of our members still found time to participate in the FISTS  Winter Sprint and made 29 contacts.

>>>>>>>
Harry, AA2WN, makes
some CW contacts

Commissioning Day - May 22-23, 2004

     A big THANK YOU to those that participated in our small Special Event operation May 22-23, 2004. This event was in celebration of the 61st anniversary of the BB62's commissioning (May 23, 1943). We logged a total of 120 QSO's which isn't to bad considering how poor band conditions were early in the day.


Harry, AA2WN works some CW
while Ray, WB2NBJ,and Sam, K2SMB do SSB.


Ray, WB2NBJ operates while Lou, N2HQL logs.
Jean, KA2YKN, does some operating
on the VHF station.


Lou, N2HQL and Gene, N2WFN.

Four Sisters Reunion - June 5 - 6, 2004

     We were very surprised by the pile-ups we had during our event and they did not stop until we went QRT around 8PM (local) Sunday evening. We made a total of 1626 Q's which included KH6BB (USS Missouri), N4WIS(USS Wisconsin) and K6RJI (for the USS Iowa) as well as all 50 states and 74 DXCC countries. 20 meters was the money band and we were running there almost continuously. An old Kenwood and an SB200 at about 400 watts did the trick. We used the Disc portion of the Disc/Cage antenna for 20m and the rest of the antenna farm was used on the other bands. We also had contacts on 40, 30 and 17m.


Joe, N2XYZ operates as Gene, N2WFN logs
     The ships suport for the event was outstanding and we even had a reporter from the "Courier Post" present most of Saturday. An article was in the Sunday, June 6, 2004 Currier Post and can be found at: http://www.courierpostonline.com/news/southjersey/m060604w.htm
  

Al, W2DIB does the logging for Ray, WB2NBJ		     

     Reports from Hawaii were that KH6BB (USS MISSOURI) was fairly successful in spite of poor propagation conditions all weekend. In Virginia, N4WIS (USS WISCONSIN) reported that they had pretty heavy pile-ups also.

     Unfortunately, the group representing the USS IOWA had some problems and only got on the air for a very short time on Sunday using the call K6RJI.


Ted, N3OWM handles the mike while a reporter looks on.
She even got a chance to talk to the WISCONSIN herself.


Rubin, WA2NBL works some of the pileups with
the aid of Ray, WB2NBJ


Pete, N2LVI and his son Dane, N2DJG got a good
workout during the pileups Saturday night.


Dave, WA2TVS and Wayne, WA2LET during some
of the final contacts made on Sunday evening.

Museum Ship Weekend - July 17-18, 2004

Considering the poor propagation and lousy weather on Sunday, this was another banner event for BNJARS. We had 2 HF stations going in the ham shack and a third HF station set up outside Radio Central. We logged a total of 758 contacts with 13 duplicates, for a total of 745 individual calls add to our logs. Of those contacts, 635 were on (SSB) and 123 were made using (CW).

     Of special note are the 23 SSB contacts that were made using the Red Phone in FACCON 1 tied to the AN/URT-23 transmitter located in the transmitter room. As you can see from the next 3 pics, it is certainly not a one man operation!. A big THANK YOU goes out to Gene Furmanski for all the effort he put forth into making these QSO's possible. Gene is responsible for the rewiring job to get audio from the Red Phones to the transmitter - great work Ski !

Dave, WA2TVS, uses "red phone" to key
transmitter 2 decks below


While Ed, W2KP, tunes and monitors the receiver


and Dave, KC3AM, logs the contact

Many thanks to the 28 members who helped in one way or another to put the Big "J" on the air for Museum Ships 2004. Below are just a few pictures showing members in action.

Some of our operators
for Museum Weekend 2004


Ed, W2KP works CW at Ham-3 position & Bill, KE2XC works SSB on Ham-2 position


Charlie,N3NQX and
Joe, N2XYZ


Ted, N3OWM and Dave, KC3AM operating in the space outside Radio Central


Jean, KA2YKN
and Lou, N2HQL


Al, W2DIB and Ruben, WA2NBL


Charlie, N2CTW and
Ray, WB2NBJ


Gene, N2WFN and
John, WB2DFB

Jamboree on the Air (JOTA)- Oct 2004

   

       This year's JOTA event on the Battleship New Jersey was quite an event. Doug, WA2NPD, did another excellent job arranging for scouts to attend the event on the ship. Every scout who wanted to get on the radio was given a chance to talk on the air. In order to accomodate everyone, we had 2 stations set up in the shack as well as a third station set up in the open area just outside Radio Central. Scouts awaiting their turn at the radio were given a talk in the Message Handling area describing how communications on the battleship were done when the ship was on active duty.

TOTAL CONTACTS: 64   which included 23 states and 4 DX countries.
      Our members who operated the radios had a lot of fun. In between visiting scouts, they continued to make contacts with scouts in other areas of the country. One of our operators spent over an hour on one contact in order to give all the scouts on the other end a chance to talk with the Battleship New Jersey.

      In addition to the troops arranged by Doug, we also had visits from several cub scout packs who were taking a tour of the ship and wanted to participate in JOTA. All in all we had about 100 scouts who participated in this event (as well as one of the docents!).

Back to Top