W1OHP

The Amateur Radio Club for
SSV Oliver Hazard Perry

The current plan is for the ship to be operating from Newport starting in 2015. The club anticipates a number of amateur radio operating programs running during the year.

To keep up on news of these programs please sign up for W1OHP/MM email alerts.

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the "log"
Sept, 2014 -- W1OHP is now planning a Field Day operation in 2015, and a Special Event Station at the Newport Boat Show in September 2015.
July, 2014 -- W1OHP goes live on Schooner Mystic during the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry Summer 2014 Education at Sea Program. The Mystic, after a quick trip to Block Island, was at overnight anchor in Dutch Harbor off Dutch Island in the West Passage of Narragansett Bay. Here Doug Faunt, N6TQS, is operating with Vic Farmer, WW4OK, listening in. Doug is engineer on board the Mystic and a survivor of the 2012 off shore sinking of the tall ship HMS Bounty *** . The station used an Icom 751 with a Hustler mag mount with 40m resonator on the cabin top, but found that the location of the steel shrouds affected the transmisson pattern going west. Tuning was by adjusting the tip of the Hustler as our low power tuner was 1500 miles south. Fortunately the cabin top was large enough to relocate the antenna -- pop it off and pop it on. The operation was somewhat like using a ship for a car in standard mobile operation. We operated the Worked all States net on 40M and managed to round up contacts from Canada, Minnesota, Indianna, Mississippi, Ohio, Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Jersey, Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, and other states.

The view from the top ... next year to figure out which antenna works best from up here [the Mystic is 170 ft. long and smaller than the Perry].
2014 QSL Card
September, 2013 -- Currently we have two ARRL Volunteer Examiners in W1OHP and are looking for one more. Also we are looking for donations of equipment to be used for the 2014 special events program. W1OHP may also be able to operate Class C [maritime mobile] for ARRL Field Day, June, 2014. The Perry has a sparred length of 196 ft.; an overall length of 132 ft., and when fully rigged, a height above water of 128 ft. This month they are adding well over 25 tons of lead attached to grounded steel racks, which W1OHP considers a ground plane, but Capt. Bailey calls ballast. l Look for the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry booth at the Newport Boat Show [9/12-15]. l W1OHP talked about on the Newport County Radio Club Website. l W1OHP featured in Captain Bailey's Blog August, 2013 -- We applied for "W1OHP" and recieved that on Aug. 9, 2013. That license will need to be renewed in 2023. KC1AFD was retired. Estimates are that the ship has a useful life of 100 years, so we will have to keep the records on file for nine more renewals. July, 2013 -- By pure accident we looked up the call W1OHP and found it available ... so we filed with the FCC for a club station and received KC1AFD on July 16, 2013. [W1YLB, W1GS, WW4OK, KA1GHC] On board the Perry: in this photo W1YLB evaluates a good location tween deck for a temporary Ham radio station with a crew volunteer from tall ship Gazela.

*** from Wikipedia: On 25 October 2012, the Bounty left New London, Connecticut, heading for St. Petersburg, Florida, initially going on an easterly course to avoid Hurricane Sandy. On 29 October 2012 at 03:54 EDT, the ship's owner called the United States Coast Guard for help during the hurricane after she lost contact with the ship's master. He was an amateur radio operator and used Winlink on shortwave to send an e-mail to the Coast Guard, because common communication methods like satellite phone or Maritime Mobile Net had failed. The ship's master had reported she was taking on water off the coast of North Carolina, about 160 miles (260 km) from the storm, and the crew were preparing to abandon ship. There were sixteen people aboard. Vice Admiral Parker, USCG, reported the ship had sunk and fourteen people had been rescued from liferafts by two rescue helicopters. The storm had washed the captain and two crew overboard—one of the latter had made it to a liferaft, but the other two were missing.

SSV OHP Links
The Home page of SSV Oliver Hazard Perry www.facebook.com/ohpri OHPri Facebook Photo Documentary of work done in Newport, June, 2013

Email contact: W1OHP@Newport1.com