W2W Armed Forces Day Special Event Station at the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum Featuring the B-17 "City of Savannah"

This weekend, on April 15, the Coastal Amateur Radio Society will operate a special event station in honor of Armed Forces Day at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler, GA. In addition to recognizing members of our Armed Services for their service and duty, the Special Event will feature the B-17 "City of Savannah" which is on display and being restored at the museum. The special event station will be set up under the left wing of the "City of Savannah" facing out toward the Memorial Gardens. Look for W2W on the amateur HF bands from 1300-2100 UTC on Saturday. If you are in the area, drop by and join the crew operating the station.

Special QSL cards will be issued for the event. Listen for QSL address information to be given by the operators during the event; once I know the QSL address I will also post it here.

B-17 Restoration Project - March 10, 2010

This afternoon, I met Guy McDonald, K4GTM and Carroll Baker, WX4Y at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler to check out some of the radio gear in the B-17 "City of Savannah" Restoration Project that the Coastal Amateur Radio Society is helping with. Amateur Radio Operators have been asked to assist with the project by working on the radio gear. Before getting started on the equipment this afternoon, we met with Jerry McLaughlin and were issued names tags and a project t-shirt (below).

After meeting with Jerry and Marshall Brooks, we moved on to the radio equipment where the first order of business was checking out the BC-348 receiver. The outside appeared to be a bit worn, but the inside was in VERY good condition according to Carroll. There may not be much trouble involved in getting the receiver in working condition, but more will be known after Carroll has the chance to check it out in depth with some test equipment. One interesting thing we discovered is that the front of the BC-348 shows it to be a BC-348-Q model but the inside of the cover to receiver has a BC-348-N label, so it could be composed of parts from two different radios.

Next, we moved on to examine the RT-18/ARC-1 VHF set. It didn't take very long to ascertain the this radio was not in as good condition as the BC-348 is. It was obviously not as well preserved and it will probably take considerably more effort to make it operational.

There is still plenty more equipment to look over and plans to be made on how to tackle the project, but today was a good start. Once the equipment is surveyed, we'll have a better idea of how much work needs to be done and how to go about getting doing it. Additionally, some research is in order to find some schematics for the radios and some info on how to restore this type of gear.

Mac McCormick III, KF4LMT