Outstanding! Stumbled across this great piece of news that should be of interest to anyone with warm blood running through their veins. I for one remember Grey's books while growing up,so I will be in there to obtain my contact.Good Luck es 73, Respectfully,G.L.Mitchell, - W2MYA, West Caldwell,N.J. USA
Oh yeah, hope to work them also. As mentioned in the other news thread I lived a couple of summers on a cattle ranch near Show Low in the Rim Country. It is a wonderful area of vast skies, thunderous storms and vistas spreading to the horizon. Perfect for what "The West" should be. That belt across Arizona is so worth a visit: Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, Oak Creek, and of course far to the west the Grand Canyon. But if you are out there see the Rim too.
Love how they say, "...long after evidence of radio activity is gone..." This sounds a lot like, "...long after evidence of radioactivity is gone..." Those scary radioactive SSB folks.
I grew up on Barnegat Bay on Coates Point, directly across from Good Luck Point and WOO. As the crow flies, maybe it was a mile across the bay. There was little doubt through the 1960's and 70's when WOO went into that transmitting mode with the huge rhombic array and how there was no watching television until they were done. Hard to believe it was in operation until 1999.
Well that is when commercial Morse was discontinued, so I guess it makes sense they shut this down then too. I used to hear the AT&T high seas telephone stations sending their placeholder callsigns in CW, and got SWL cards from them. If they were strong in MN I can imagine what they sounded like next door!
Netherlands PACC 2017 and PI6FR on air. During the Dutch PACC contest (February 11-12), Laurens PD9X and Bert, PA1BK will be active with the special callsign PA6FR from the province of Friesland. They will operate in the M2 category. Laurens and Bert are members from contestgroup PI4M and have good skills in HF contesting. During the past years they have built a good contest station, consisting of 2x Elecraft K3 with Acom amps and with the required station filtering. Antenna routing with interlock for selecting each antenna available per radio. UltraBeam and 3-band yagi for the higher bands, for the low bands several dipoles, Inverted L's and a K9AY rx antenna. More info available: https://www.qrz.com/DB/PA6FR
I well remember WOO and listening in to the "High Seas Radiotelephone Network" calls on HF from here on Long Island. I can't remember which Rock group it is that has the beginning of such a call embedded into one of their recordings with the female operators voice telling the caller she's trying to connect him up to complete the call. It was fascinating to monitor WOO, some of the calls were tragic, some with welcome news, some between a man and his, well, "other" interest. Never a dull moment. I had the opportunity many times to operate from the old RCA transmitting site in Rocky Point NY back in the late 1970's with an HW-8 QRP rig feeding one of the huge Rhombic antennas on the property. To say we received genuine 599's from distant lands was an understatement. No one believed we were running just 8 watts out ! De K2JX
Some local hams were trying to convert this outstanding facility to a meeting place for radio amateurs and technical people. Having weathered at least 20 "tropical cyclones" since the 1930s its surprising that building and antennas were so badly damaged by Sandy. At least 10 acres of antenna wires disappeared with Sandy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Great_Atlantic_hurricane
Rocky Point Long Island was RCA's Global transmission site that covered about 12 acres filled with high wooden poles supporting antenna wires. The main building was beautiful it's front entrances ceiling was decorated with colored hand painted scenes of man's progress in wireless communications in the early part of the 19th century. It would have been a great place to save for future generations to see what came before their Smartphones. Sadly, not much of it is left these days. The land is now owned by the NYS Dept. of Conservation. Many other historic radio sites were here on Long Island and active well into the late 1970's. One such site was closed down in the early 1980's and many local Hams hearing about it descended enmasse to the abandoned property determined to 'er "salvage" radio equipment left behind in an unlocked building. This last of it's kind property is now a Costco ! de K2JX
