Fun contact today

[w2amr]

So I'm at my backyard station this afternoon, tuning around 20 meters. I hear Russ/K5MQR, who is very loud, and has a lot of background noise on his signal. I soon find out why. He is flying in an air force C130J Hercules military transport plane, 25K' over new York. It is a big plane with 4 turboprop engines. After several tries I broke through the pile up , and we had a nice 5 minute chat. 5-9 , both ways. He said he was using one of the planes radios and the antenna was in the tail section. Wonder if he needed special permission to operate on the ham bands ? Imagine, an Air force guy in a 70 million dollar aircraft , flying at 25K' @ 350 knots , talking to an old guy sitting in his backyard in New Jersey. How frigging cool is that? :mrgreen:
14256

[KG4CGC]

Very friggin cool, George.

[NQ6U]

Way cool indeed. I once worked an aeronautical mobile with a guy on a commercial airliner out over the Caribbean Sea. Took a while to get through the pileup.

[WØTKX]

Way cooler than the dude from the UK that made the news by talking to the ISS. :)

[kb2vxa]

Way cool indeed! I had the pleasure of working 2 AMs, the first quite difficult because a private plane has a very large 2M footprint and being on top of a dog pile is as bad as being under one. The second was at K2PG working one of the last DC3 Pacific Island hoppers on 20M. Yeah, it went in Phil's log. (;->) Being military you get 5 gold stars for that one General Carroll.

[W3WN]

Very cool!

AA3FI is a US(elss)Air pilot... I guess an AA pilot now. He used to "drive" Airbus's cross-country... and sometimes he'd get one that was equipped for over-the-ocean flights, which meant it had HF capability. So, every now and then, you could work him /Aeronautical Mobile on 17 SSB. Used to get some fairly decent pileups doing so.

[KØWVM]

So I'm at my backyard station this afternoon, tuning around 20 meters. I hear Russ/K5MQR, who is very loud, and has a lot of background noise on his signal. I soon find out why. He is flying in an air force C130J Hercules military transport plane, 25K' over new York. It is a big plane with 4 turboprop engines. After several tries I broke through the pile up , and we had a nice 5 minute chat. 5-9 , both ways. He said he was using one of the planes radios and the antenna was in the tail section. Wonder if he needed special permission to operate on the ham bands ? Imagine, an Air force guy in a 70 million dollar aircraft , flying at 25K' @ 350 knots , talking to an old guy sitting in his backyard in New Jersey. How frigging cool is that? :mrgreen:
14256

Nice! I rode on one from Oman to Kyrgyzstan (Manas). You have to wear earplugs pretty much anywhere in the aircraft as the noise is deafening. The wire on most is just up and behind the cockpit area on the top of the fuselage and runs at an upward angle towards close to midway up the front portion of the tail section for HF/SSB comms. Had a scary moment over Uzbekistan as the pilot's flight plan was lost. The Uzbeki's were about to scramble a couple of Su-27's to force us to land at a Uzbeki military base. The pilots eventually convinced the Uzbeki ATC reps to let us land at a US Military base (K-2) and resubmit the plan before arriving at Manas. Bad part was I was one of three weapon's couriers (M-4's, M-9's [military 9mm pistols], M-60's, and M-203's) protecting a pallet with these items on it. Wonder how it would have looked had we been forced to land other than where we stopped.

During my time in Nebraska, I talked with RC-135 crew members who were trolling truckers on the CB bands, while they were flying a mission over Southern Florida. Some of their stories were hilarious.

[w2amr]

During my time in Nebraska, I talked with RC-135 crew members who were trolling truckers on the CB bands, while they were flying a mission over Southern Florida. Some of their stories were hilarious.I can imagine.:lol:

[w2amr]

Way cool indeed! I had the pleasure of working 2 AMs, the first quite difficult because a private plane has a very large 2M footprint and being on top of a dog pile is as bad as being under one. The second was at K2PG working one of the last DC3 Pacific Island hoppers on 20M. Yeah, it went in Phil's log. (;->) Being military you get 5 gold stars for that one General Carroll.Finally!:snicker:

[K4PIH]

Had a USAF bud who was a flight nurse on C-9 Nightingail who would get on HF and work any and all. He also took his ht with pocket packet and worked that during overland flights. Nice having antennas at 30k ft.

[N8YX]

A certain high school friend of mine who may or may not have been in the Air Force may or may not have used the HF sets in his squadron's FB-111s to screw with truckers on CB, talk to ham and CB friends and engage in other signal verification activities. But I wouldn't know anything about that.

[KØWVM]

Had a USAF bud who was a flight nurse on C-9 Nightingail who would get on HF and work any and all. He also took his ht with pocket packet and worked that during overland flights. Nice having antennas at 30k ft.

Back in the late 90's, I was with a crew flying from Raleigh Durham Airport out to Las Vegas for Desert Warfare training and brought along my HT. We got up in the air and about 10 min later, I just happened to key up some known repeaters, along with others out of range. I was getting several and some were doubling/tripling each other.

I was also watchful of the flight attendants to ensure I wasn't going to get into trouble. :snicker:

[WØTKX]

Someday, maybe I'll have a QSO with George.

That would be cool. ;)

[w2amr]

Someday, maybe I'll have a QSO with George.

That would be cool. ;)Stranger things have happened.:snicker: