Just Stuff

This page contains miscellaneous items that interest me. There is no particular topic or focus, just stuff.

QSL card history

Although I like QSL cards, I do not have very many with a story. Here are a few.

Hearing a great CW signal on 30 meters I looked up the call (K3EW) on QRZ. In the Biography section he discussed his early days in the hobby along with his original call signs. It rang a bell with me so I went through my old six meter AM QSL cards and there he was. After an e-mail exchange with K3EW we swapped QSL cards 60 years later only this time digitally.

GB2RN on the HMS Belfast

The HMS Belfast is a town class cruiser built for the Royal Navy. She is now permanently moored on the River Thames in London. Housed in the old radio room on the ship is amateur radio station GB2RN. We paid a visit to the ship in early March 2020, but could not time it right to be there when the station was operational. We did hear and copy the canned Morse code message that played by the station as we looked through the protective glass.

Greenwich, England

At the beginning of time – well sort of. Amateur radio operators around the world track their contacts (log) in UTC (Universal Coordinated Time) once called GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Greenwich is a beautiful town a short boat ride from downtown London where one can tip a pint of local brew and see where time began.

MOTAT

On a once in a lifetime trip to New Zealand in December 2024 we had the opportunity to visit the MOTAT (Museum of Transportation and Technoloy) in Auckland.  Any time there are old airplanes to look at I am there, and the museum had a nice collection of well-kept aircraft.  The crown jewel from my point of view was a single-engine tiny aircraft piloted by Cliff Tait.  It was a NZ built Airtourer 115 named ‘Miss Jacky’ (Pictured below).  Most eye catching was the NZART (New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters) logo on the side along with the call letters ZL1AKI.  The placard by the airplane gave a bit of information.  In 1969 Cliff flew this little yellow plane around the world to “bring awareness of New Zealand built aeroplanes.”

The first two pictures below were taken during our visit to the MOTAT.  The next two are of ZL1AKI’s QSL card that came up by surprise on ebay as I was searching the internet for information about Cliff and his airplane.

More to follow…..