Hi, Here is some brand new first hand news to Elecrafters.
This year is the 150th anniversary of railways in Turkey. So I am planning two major events. One will be to broadcast from Haydar Pasha train station, which is celebrating its 100th year, with the callsign TC150HP. I hope to be on the air between 30 May (the day construction began at Haydar Pasha station) untill 30 June, in my SPARE TIME, whenever that may be. The other will be from several train stations around the country with the callsign TC150DD (TCDD is the abbreviation for Turkish Republic State Railways), between 23 August and 23 September (the day the railways were first built). In doing this I was wondering whether I could also transmit from train wagons as a "rail mobile" station. It is obvious I cannot do this from electric powered trains. However on diesel or steam (if there is any left around) powered trains, I cannot think of any reason why this should not be possible. I am sure this must have been tried in earlier years of HAM radio but I haven't come accross any mentions of it in my limited HAM life since 1999, the year of the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey which led me into radio communications. Is it possible at all to work from a train in motion? The second question relates to stations in Americas and Oceania. With my QRP K2 and inverted V dipole setting, I had QSOs with almost all of Europe (the most difficult of which was with Ireland), North Africa, Middle East, Eastern Black Sea and many parts of Russia, as well as quite a few stations (probably big guns) in Japan. However, I have never heard any stations from Australia, New Zealand, Central America nor Eastern Asia. I have heard one or two stations from the US (but not from Canada), Indonesia, South Africa and South America but could not get them to hear my QRP signals over the pile-up. So, I was wondering if it is at all possible for me to have QSOs with these countries. I have got a feeling I am either in the air at the wrong times to hear many of them or that they are just too far away for my simple setting. Ideas? BTW, if I can get the "rail mobile" station to work properly, I will (hopefully) be broadcasting from 9 portable and 9 "rail mobile" locations. With the addition of a few other TC150xx stations, I have got a feeling I can turn this into an award setting, where stations contacting say 10 of these settings will be issued an award. What do you reckon? (Ooops, this has become the third question <g>.) Is it worth looking for sponsors? Thanking you in advance for your help. 73! de TA2RX ---------------------------------- Bekir Kemal Ataman ArchiMac BBS Sysop & Webmaster <http://www.archimac.org/> _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
