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December 7
“A Date Which Will Live in Infamy”~ FDR

Today the Azalea Coast Amateur Radio Club in Wilmington, NC brought the U.S.S North Carolina to life on the airwaves. The U.S.S North Carolina calls Wilmington home, birthed along side downtown in the Cape River. The North Carolina BB-55, NI4BK(NIBK military designation) was the first vessel to enter Pearl Harbor after the attack December 7th 1941.

The ham radio operators including myself operated from 2 of the ships many radio rooms. We operate a modern Yaesu transceiver but utilize the ship's original wiring and antenna to broadcast our signal around the world. Some the contacts on SSB today include one Russian station, California, Texas, Vermont, Maine, Colorado, Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Tennessee to name just a few. One of which was a vet who was stationed in the Pacific during the war. We also made a QSO with the USS Kidd. Those QSO's, contacts, we're made on the 20 meter band.

NI4BK is the callsign of the ship as provided by the FCC, but it's original military designation was NIBK. I am proud to stay that for 1 and a half hours I brought the old girl online.

74xx Contest Prize

7400 Contest

These are terrible pictures but I wanted to get something up right away to show appreciation for my prize to the 7400 folks. Now what this is, is a device that takes the 20-pin connector from a computer power supply and give you used power points to run things. As you can see there's a Ground, 12v, 5v, 3v and a -12v points. There's LED's from each volt, a powered LED and a device on LED. Of course at the top right next to the 20-pin plug the push button, On/Off switch.

Tube Headphone Amp Project Update

Just a quick follow up entry to the Tube Headphone Amp project. I've received updates that my PCB's are back from the fabricator and are being processed. Specifically they are cutting down the master board into the individual orders and hopefully mine will be shipping out soon. I'm really rather excited about the project. Between getting married and this project, 2012 will end out with a hell of a bang for me. Just to specify, I did yes mention my fondness of marriage and this electronics project together. Picture this, your holding a 40 foot ladder and placing those two things on the ladder I can assure my fiancee, should you make it over to reading this post, the marriage is well up at 40 feet. My amp is probably rung number 4.

Anyways check back often. The second the boards come in, I'm assembling and hopefully remembering to take pictures.