PIGS ON LST

Greetings from the Flying Pigs of Clarksville, Tennessee. This is a short story about our recent outing where we only made one contact but had the great privilege of visiting one of the most interesting ships in our area, the LST 325 (http://lstmemorial.org/). Our outing consisted of myself- KM6NN, Terry-N5HOT, Doc-NV4T, and Lewis-KF4WK. Terry had just received his new KX3 radio from Elecraft (http://www.elecraft.com/elecraft_products_page.htm) and we wanted to give it a try. We worked our way through a couple of munchies at Mc Donald's and moved over to a parking area on the Cumberland River. We have worked this area before and had lots of room to park and the view is great. We set up the KX3 on the tailgate of my truck and ran the coax from Terry's Jeep to the radio. We used a Hustler antenna and in no time we were on the air. Not a lot on 40 meters so we changed to 20 and right off the bat we came upon WB4MNK-Art down in Port Orange Florida. Art was on his KX1 Elecraft radio running 4 watts into doublet whip up 20 feet on a push up pole. Art is a member of the NAQCC (http://naqcc.info/) as we are and works a lot of QRP CW. His signal was a good 579 and he gave us a 569 report. Great to make a QRP two way contact on a beautiful morning. After signing with Art we decided to shut down and make our way to the LST 325 which was moored just down the river from where we were operating. LST 325 had been on a fund raising cruse to fund the repairs and the museum in Evansville. During the 2012 Museum Ships on the Air Contest (http://www.nj2bb.org/museum/) the Flying Pigs worked the LST 325 from the Greenway here in Clarksville (story on www.kf4l.org.) By the way we worked them on half a watt using KF4WK's KX3 radio. We had great hopes of hand delivering the QSL card to the LST when we traveled to Evansville IN in November of 2012. When we heard that the LST was going to be coming to Clarksville we were stoked. Our chance to see the radio and ship was great news to us. If you ever get the chance to work the LST 325 I think you will love the way the radio sounds. Nothing like an old tube radio on the air.
As it turned out Terry and I were the only two who decided to tour the ship. We made our way to the main entrance and contacted one of the crew and requested to see the radio operator. We met up with Perry-W8AU who gave us directions on how to get to the radio room. We worked our way up to the main deck behind the wheelhouse and began a tour that was the high lite of our day. We were showed around where the radio operators worked and where the newer equipment was operated from. I explained that we had a QSL card to present to the LST from the Museum Ships Weekend on the air. Perry let us know that BOB-N9XAW was the radio operator during the event. Perry was kind enough to fill out our QSL card and present to us with Bob's call and info. Outstanding...... what a thrill.... Attached are a few photos taken by Terry and I recommend giving yourself a enjoyable time by visiting the LST 325 in Evansville, Indiana. I am sure you will enjoy the tour. Don't forget to let a member of the crew know you are a ham and would like to visit with the radio operator. The radio room is not on the self guided tour so you can't just walk in. Thanks for reading our story and we hope to see you on the air.
72 from the Flying Pigs of Clarksville and QRP Rules....
John and the Gang