Chris G0DWV on the mic. with Roger G3LDI looking on.

Norfolk Amateur Radio Club managed to contact 116 other radio amateurs in 23 different countries on Saturday 22nd April 2018 when we took part in the annual International Marconi Day (IMD) event to mark the inventor's birthday.

This was the ninth year we've taken part.

Using the call GB0CMS and a mixture of Morse code, telephony (speech) and data (FT8), contacts were made with other radio amateurs across the UK, Europe, and the USA.

Notable contacts were made with other IMD stations in Italy, Ireland, Weston-Super-Mare and Poldhu, Cornwall – home of the Marconi Centre from where the inventor made the first transatlantic transmission in 1901.

We ran the all-day special event station at Caister Lifeboat to commemorate the village's original Marconi Wireless Station, which was established at Caister in 1900. The station was in a house in the High Street known as Pretoria Villa and its original purpose was to communicate with ships in the North Sea and the Cross Sands lightship.

Conditions weren’t brilliant due to a major solar disturbance (effects of a coronal hole), but we were still able to cross the Atlantic on three occasions.

We were picked up in Pennsylvania, US via FT8 at -20dB on the reverse beacon network, but didn't make any transatlantic FT8 QSOs.

The equipment used was 100W maximum from an Icom IC-7400 (20m) and an Icom IC-7300 (80/40/30m). Antennas were a W5GI dipole on 40m and my design of a monoband end-fed half-wave (EFHW) vertical for 20m. The FT8 digital mode was used for the first time to show what can be worked with just 20-25W.

We also used a Flex Maestro to remotely link into Malcolm G3PDH's home station via the internet and worked back to ourselves using his special First Class Operators' Club call for April, G4FOC. The Maestro is very impressive!

Above all, it was great fun and a good social event

The Orford Ness masts

If you fancy a bit of nostalgia you can now listen to Radio Caroline again on 648kHz AM on the medium wave.

The famous pirate radio station needs little introduction, but is now broadcasting legally using (ironically) the famous Orford Ness antenna system on the Suffolk cost, formerly used to transmit the BBC World Service in English around the clock on 648 kHz from September 1982 until March 2011.

As Christmas is coming, I thought I would remind people that there are some great radio-related goodies for sale at CafePress.co.uk and .com.

You can choose from a number of items, including:

• Three different types of ship's radio room clock, with silent period sectors marked
• "Remember QRT SP" Merchant Navy Radio Officer merchandise
• "Keep Calm and Work Some DX" merchandise
• "Keep Calm and Work Some CW" items
• Nikola Tesla merchandise, featuring him sitting in his Colorado Springs laboratory in 1899, surrounded by electrical arcs.

You can have the last three slogans added to T-shirts, sweatshirts, mouse mats, calendar, mugs and much more.

Just go to the Radio Room!

Or there are a number of my radio-related books that make good presents , including "Radio Propagation Explained", "Antenna Modelling", "Stealth Antennas" and "Getting Started in Amateur Radio". Use the image links on the right for more information.

The big guns of the USS Iowa.

As many regular readers of this blog may know, I try to visit as many special amateur radio stations as I can when working overseas.

This week I am in Long Beach, California again for a conference and it was an ideal opportunity to visit the famous battleship USS Iowa in nearby San Pedro, which has an amateur radio station with the callsign NI6BB.

USS Iowa (BB-61) is a floating maritime museum that is well worth the visit. It has a rich history that spreads from World War Two, through the Korean conflict in the 50s, and the cold war before it finally became a museum in 2012.

US Navy veteran Jerry Johnson with one of the 110lb powder sacks.

Its main battery consisted of nine 16 in (406 mm) Mark 7 guns, which could fire 2,700 lb (1,200 kg) armour-piercing shells 23 miles (37 km). On the tour you find out how they used to load the guns with six 110lb silk sacks filled with powder, which when ignited with a single cartridge would rapidly burn in one third of a second, firing the 1,900 lb (862 kg) shell out at 2,690 feet per second (820 m/s).

The USS Iowa discone-cage HF antenna, complete with plastic owl!

The other statistics are staggering (including 19.7-inch armour plating), but I’ll leave you to Google them.

Anyway, back to the radio, the radio room on the Iowa is well equipped with a Kenwood radio for HF.

On the bow of Iowa is the discone-cage antenna. Fed at the top it is a discone providing coverage from approximately 10 to 30 MHz with a VSWR below 3:1. The antenna has a plastic owl on it to stop pigeons resting - but they ignore it apparently!

Ron Frank N3HI let me operate some 20m SSB from the ship, as I have G0KYA/AB8ZV UK full and US Extra Class licences, and I worked a few stations including Washington State and Ohio. One was a “nearly” as I couldn’t quite get his full call before he faded away, which was a shame. HF conditions weren’t brilliant.

There were one or two loud stations on CW, which they often work, and Ron says they tend to operate a lot of digital too, including FT8.

Anyway, my thanks to Ron for letting me play for an hour and giving me some detailed history of the USS Iowa. If you are ever in the Long Beach/San Pedro area go and visit. It is truly fantastic.

My thanks to Ron Frank, N3HI.

I also revisited W6RO, "The Queen Mary", in Long Beach, California where I am staying. I operated from there in 2012 and they always welcome visiting radio amateurs. We had a long chat about UK and US amateur radio.

If you are interested in some of my other historic radio visits you can read about:

• NI6IW - USS Midway, San Diego, California
• W7SUB - the USS Blueback, Portland, Oregon
• K6KPH - The Maritime Radio Historical Society, Point Reyes/Bolinas, California