Here are two articles I wrote for Worldradio in the 1990s about events in the 1980s-90s. The first is about a neighbor experimenting with radios in the 1910s, the second is about my experience getting a reciprocal license in Venezuela in 1985, and the last article is about a sailboat delivery that went awry. A little sliver of history...
Getting on the air in Venezuela Worldradio, August 1995 [recalling my time in Venezuela in 1985]
Fresh coffee was handed to me as I
settled into one of the waiting room's tan leather chairs. I eagerly accepted
the delicious brew and was ready to wait a long time to see the Venezuelan
official who would give me my reciprocal ham license. I had just finished
panning across the walls of windows that revealed the bright green mountains
which encircle Caracas when I was introduced to the radio licensing manager.
With a friendly handshake he led me to his office. Fresh coffee was brought in
and we were ready to conduct business Venezuelan style.
I was managing an oil exploration crew
in southern Venezuela and while in Caracas on my leave from the crew, I got
into an ancient Chevrolet with foot-thick doors and made my way to the radio
communication office to get my YV2 call. I had worked with Venezuelan
officialdom in my job with mixed results. Although "collaboration"
fees are required by some petty officials in Venezuela, generally they have a
wonderful style of business. It starts with warm hospitality and evolves into
learning the nature and disposition of their guest. The introductory chit-chat
lasts much longer than in the U.S. and a cordial atmosphere is quickly
developed as you debate whether to invite your new friend over for Christmas.
Back in the radio office we finally got
to business. I quickly got my license certificate and the radio licensing
manager even paid for the fancy stamps that made it all legal.
Continuing our conversation, he tells me
about some other "American radio people" from the U.S. He introduces
me to them and it turns out they were with the U.S. Department of Commerce and
were working on spectrum management. They were not too impressed at meeting an
expatriate ham.
In trying to involve myself with the Venezuelan
ham community—which I would not be able to do in my remote camp—I visited the
Caracas ham radio club. There I was warmly greeted by the well-dressed crowd.
Their "International Chairman," who spoke excellent English,
immediately befriended me. We were seated in the front row and watched the
whole proceeding. At the end of the meeting, new officers were installed. This
procedure included the officers raising their hands as they took an oath to
comply with their assigned duties. A very formal and serious approach to ham
radio indeed.
After the meeting, I was given a tour of the club station which consisted of the best Collins equipment available. I left my newfound friends, once again appreciating the fraternity of ham radio community and the wonderful state of ham radio in Venezuela.
Interpreting Silence Worldradio, March 1990 [Recalling my sailboat delivery in 1988]
The engine didn't work, the batteries
were nearly dead and we had 15 days of cold North Atlantic sailing to go.
"How much radio time do you
think we have?"
"I'd estimate 10 minutes of
transmit time on sideband. "
An unfortunate but wholly prudent decision was agreed upon.
The job was to deliver a 38 ft.
sailboat, the Ishmael, from Cape May, NJ, to Falmouth, England. Onboard the
delivery were the owner, a professional skipper, myself and another crew
member.
All but the skipper were volunteers but
we all had our own reasons for participating on this trip. In addition to the
charm of arriving in Europe by sea, I was motivated by a desire to further my
ocean sailing experience and to visit with family and friends in Norway.
The boat was a nine-year-old sloop
equipped with the requisite equipment for a transatlantic passage, including a 100W
channelized, general coverage SSB transceiver. And that, of course, meant that
ham radio was coming along!
Although I am not a particularly active
ham, there have been occasions when I have pulled out the old ticket, blown the
dust off it and had it serve me well.
With the help of Vince West, W90PY, and
Jay Gooch, W9YRV, we set up a program to monitor the boat's passage and to
handle messages. Vince (living in Illinois) set up several relay stations in
strategically located areas. Most helpful were G0DOD in northern England and VO1CA
in Newfoundland, Canada.
Vince and I went over the radio system
so he was familiar with what we had to work with. The radio system, including
spares, included: One ICOM M700, general coverage SSB transceiver; one
automatic antenna tuner; three deep cycle batteries; two alternators and one four-cylinder,
Perkins diesel engine. The primary antenna was the backstay, which is the
supporting cable that extends from the top of the mast to the back of the boat.
The backstay was insulated at both ends
and attached to the antenna tuner by means of the center conductor of a RG-58
cable spliced into the stainless-steel stay. The stay was oriented at a about a
70-degree angle to the horizon and this nearly vertical orientation with the
Atlantic Ocean as a ground plane, provided a good antenna system for such a
small space.
The backup antenna had to be strong
enough to handle storm conditions, yet be compact enough to store easily.
Moreover, the antenna had to be small enough to rig on a 38 ft. sailboat.
The compromise was met by the venerable
dipole cut for 15M and made of a stranded phospor-bronze wire that Jay had
saved from one of his far-flung radio tests. With heavy duty insulators, RG-58
feedline and lots of silicone, the antenna rolled up into a nice, small ring.
In addition to the SSB, the boat had a
VHF-FM, marine band transceiver and an Emergency Position Indicating Radio
Beacon. The EPIRB transmits a beacon on the aircraft distress frequencies of
121.5 and 243.0 MHz (they will soon be able to work on the satellite monitored
frequency of 406.025 MHz also).
All the large metal parts of the boat
were electrically attached and grounded to the lead keel. This system provides
a fine RF ground — especially in salt water. If this ground had been
inadequate, we had available the lifelines that go around the boat, which could
have been fashioned into a counterpoise.
Vince and I set up primary and backup
frequencies, as well as the names of relatives in case we used AT&T's High
Seas service to call a relative and wanted to coordinate that information.
We embarked on our trip on a warm, sunny
day in May and headed out to sea with the eagerness of sled dogs. On the first
day the weather quickly went from T-shirts to sweaters and fog descended upon
us. All this, even before we were out of sight of land.
We established a watch schedule based on
a two hour on, six hour off, pattern, giving us each three watches per day.
The days slid by quickly, getting
continually colder as we sailed north by northeast. Even the warm waters of the
Gulf Stream didn't seem to resurrect that moment of summer we had aboard when
we first embarked.
I was amazed at how much wildlife there
was to see. Every day I would see something: Birds, porpoises and even whales.
I was most impressed with a small black and white gull that looked a lot like a
sparrow. This bird would venture out into any kind of frigid sea, swooping into
the deepest troughs, searching for some unfortunate, edible thing. I never saw
them catch anything, but their game of ocean-tag must have been entertaining
sailors for centuries.
On our sixth day, as we moved with the
Gulf Stream, we arrived at a unique waves place called the Grand Banks. This is
one of the richest fishing grounds in the world. The ocean floor rises to less
than a 200 ft. depth and the Labrador Current, originating from cold polar
waters, just begins to engage the Gulf Stream in its losing battle.
Although the Labrador is not allowed to
venture far from the Canadian coastline, its interaction with the Gulf in this
shallow water creates a rich environment for marine growth. I saw ocean going
trawlers every day in this area, leaving a trail of dead fish in their wake.
The seascape took a different form here
too. The odd combination of waves produced a sea that reminded me of the
rolling hills of northwester Illinois. Sometimes the waves were quite steep and
the boat would surf down them with water foaming and boiling around the hull.
Daily life had fallen into a slow speed
routing; sleeping, eating, steering, fixing things and then sleeping again. The
sleeping always seemed to be in short supply; even though I had a lot of “free”
time it was hard getting used to
waking up at 2 a.m. to stand in wet,
freezing air for two hours. The two hour watches in cold weather and sometimes
stressful sailing conditions really took a lot of energy. We ate well, however,
as the boat was stocked with good food and everyone except me was talented in
its preparation.
The sked with Vince, Jay and the gang
went well. Every other day I would call in and was greeted by familiar voices.
Propagation to Illinois wasn't too good, but it was passable. Contact with VO1CA
was impossible on 20M and the backstay was too short to load well on bands
below 20M.
However, G0DOD's voice boomed in on both
20 and 15M, with a calmness and gentility that provided a refreshing contrast
to our wet, sloshing environment. Unfortunately, because we didn't have a lot
of diesel fuel available for battery charging, I couldn't do much ragchewing;
just a hello, our position, bearing, speed, weather and overall condition. The
Maritime Mobile Net was also very helpful, although our tiny signal was
sometimes not heard.
As we passed the Grand Banks, our
environment became dominated by sounds and coldness. The boat made sounds as it
worked through the seas. The waves made sounds; the wind, rigging, and even the
coldness itself contributed to the cacophony of nautical serenity.
Only on one occasion, when the boat was
drifting under a light wind, was the sound changed. Three curious porpoises
circled the boat for 10 minutes, blowing air and contributing the beautiful
sound of living pipe organs to the stillness.
Once a day we would intrude our
mechanical noise-maker into our simple life. Around 10 a.m. every morning we
would run the diesel for an hour or two to charge up the batteries.
On the eleventh day of the trip the
diesel did not start. The batteries were already low and the repeated cranking
produced no results. We finally found that a Thermos bottle had fallen over,
hit and opened a pet cock on the primary filter in the diesel fuel line causing
all the fuel to run out of the engine. I was able to use the lift pump to prime
fuel all the way to the pump, but I could not get it to flow the injectors.
We cranked a bit more to prime the
injectors, but with no luck. Given this unfortunate condition I assessed how
much battery charge remained and guessed that we had 10 minutes of transmit
time left on SSB. We quickly decided that we would give up on the engine and
save our batteries for emergency use only.
We took the additional measure of
disconnecting the terminals of one of the batteries to assure it did not leak
through the electrical system.
However, with the deep concern for
battery reserves, it was also evident that we should not even make one last
transmission on our regular sked to inform Vince and the relays of our
condition. When out at sea you have to be very careful in considering
contingencies and it is better to have worried friends than to be one second
short on transmit time when your life may depend on it.
Vince knew that we only had one engine
(and one radio) so he would be able to figure out that we had lost one or the
other. On the other hand, he could have also thought that we had lost the boat
and our EPIRB — an equally valid assumption.
All I could do was try to think through
how Vince would interpret this unplanned silence — an interesting mental
exercise. I thought that Vince would be able to figure out that there had been
no storms or unusual sea conditions in our area and he also knew that the boat
and the crew were in good shape as of our last sked, only two days prior.
We proceeded on to England with a
self-imposed power blackout: No radios, radio navigation (LORAN), freezer,
lights or autopilot (which was not working well in these seas anyhow). The
weather on this trip had generally been bad, meaning we had overcast days and
nights which limited our celestial navigation abilities.
Since the fastest way to England is via
the Gulf Stream, which corresponds nicely with the great circle route, we were
actually close enough to Canada during the first part of the trip to pick up
their LF LORAN signals. We would be able to pick up LORAN chains from Iceland
and England as we progressed eastwards.
With our batteries in storage, we would
need to rely on celestial navigation and therefore be subject to the whims of
the clouds.
The day the engine had failed to start
was a relatively calm one. However, the next day the winds shifted so that we
were going into the wind and the waves. This slowed us down because we lost
some of our sail power and had additional hull resistance from the ramming of
the bow into the waves.
The second day after the engine failure,
we noticed sea water seeping into the boat through the bow. Each time we would
bang into a wave, water would ooze through the inside mat of the fiberglass
hull. We quickly cleared the bow section of all the wet odds and ends that were
stored there, making a terrible mess of the boat in the process, in order to
find from where the leak was coming.
The water was coming through the fiberglass
in a 1 X 2 ft. section of the bow. The amount of seepage would increase
substantially when we hit the waves, but we could not find any single source of
the leaking.
The amount of seepage was very small,
well within the capabilities of our bilge pump, but what was happening to the
hull? Was there a small crack in the hull? Was the nine-year-old fiberglass
delaminating?
With the boat banging into each wave and
spray flying over the bow, it was impossible to check the outside of the hull
at the bow. It seemed that no matter what was causing the leak it was possible
that it could get much worse.
We put the EPIRB and some food and water
into bags and attached them to life preservers and set them out in the cockpit.
Our choices were to continue on to England, which would involve 10 days or so
of battering seas, or to head to the nearest point of land and assess the
boat's condition there. We decided to head to land, once again a pretty easy
choice.
The closest land was Newfoundland,
Canada. It was less than 200 miles west. We turned the boat around and headed
for it.
It took two days to get to Newfoundland,
and the sight of the barren land on the horizon provided a mixed welcome. We
sailed into St. Johns Harbor and, while docking under sail, smashed the bow
into the concrete wharf—the solid feel of land.
We put in fresh batteries and were able
to easily start the engine. Could we have done that with ours? Who knows?
After five days of radio silence, I
turned on the radio and heard Vince talking about me. They were not sure what
had happened to us. I jumped in to tell them that we were all right and in St.
Johns. Much to my dismay, a well-intended but confused ham who had heard their
repeated calling for me said that he thought he had heard me two days prior! A
bad and possibly dangerous mistake.
Because ham radio was the only way we
were communicating with anyone, we relied on its accuracy. If we were in
danger, surely no news would have been more helpful than false news.
Fortunately, Vince had seen through 
it all, discounting the
erroneous report and assuming we had radio trouble. In his concern, however, he
had recruited several big guns to call and listen for us.
When we arrived, one of the crew 
members went home, having lost
confidence in the boat, and the owner 
decided that he didn't want to
continue 
to England.
Upon inspection, it turned out that the
leak was caused by a separation of 
the anchor well bulkhead from
the 
deck. After repairing the boat
as best we could the three of us tried to sail it down to Sydney, Nova Scotia,
but were 
turned back by adverse wind.
The boat was finally berthed in
Conception Bay (a days sail northwest of 
St. Johns) and I flew to Norway
to get a short vacation out of the trip anyway.
