NI6IW, USS Midway, San Diego

I was lucky enough to visit the USS Midway aircraft carrier in San Diego, California, last week while on a work trip.

It is now a floating museum, dedicated to telling the story of how an aircraft carrier functioned, with a lot of the stories told by ex-Navy personnel who served on it.

I was even more lucky because Hal KI2HAL gave me a behind the scenes tour of the ship's amateur radio station NI6IW.

It has three Elecraft K3s that allow it to work all bands. Because of the museum's rules, all the antennas have to be the original authentic models fitted to the ship when it was in service. This means that the ham station uses a couple of navy verticals and a sloping three-wire set-up.

Hal KI2HAL

I was able to tune one of the verticals for 17m to see if I could work the UK – a distance of more than 5,000 miles. I didn't make contact, although I think I did hear G3SGE on CW working a CT station. I've not been able to track down who G3SGE is though.

The ship also has an Icom D-star set-up and makes a lot of contacts that way.

The ship is active on the Museum Ships weekend "on the air" days so you might be lucky to hear it.

The antennas

In all, the ship is fascinating – you can hear from a retired Navy pilot exactly how you land and take off on an aircraft carrier. Hairy stuff.

My thanks to Hal for showing me around. Just click on an image above to see a bigger one.