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Good evening, everyone. It's time for HamTalk
Live. It's episode number 132. The U .S. Coast
Guard Cutter Courier exhibit at the Voice of
America Museum of Broadcasting recorded live
on Thursday, September 13th, 2018. I'm your host,
Neil Rapp, WB9 VPG. Thanks for tuning in to another
episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're joined
by Lee Hite, K8CLI from the National Voice of
America Museum of Broadcasting in Westchester,
Ohio. And we'll take your calls live in just
a few minutes. Last week here on the show, Andy
Malusi, KK4LWR, was here to talk about the Collegiate
QSO Party that's coming up this weekend. So if
you missed that, you can listen anytime at HamTalkLive
.com. or on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, I Heart
Podcasts, Google Play, TuneIn, SoundCloud, or
your favorite podcast app. We're also available
on YouTube. And get your questions ready to go.
We're going to talk about the Voice of America
Museum and how a ship ties into some of the things
that the Voice of America was doing and a little
bit of a ham radio connection. So we'll talk
about that. After the interview, you can give
us a call. I'll go ahead and give you the phone
number so you can write that down and have that
ready to go. The phone number is 812 -NET -HAM
-1. That's 812 -638 -4261. Or you can call us
on Skype if you like. We're HamTalk Live on Skype.
And if you'd rather not call, you can tweet us
at HamTalk Live on Twitter. And a couple of announcements
we'll throw in here. First of all, if you haven't
heard about Flow, Hurricane Florence, the Hurricane
Watch Net and the VoIP Hurricane Net and the
Saturn Relief Nets are all... up and going. So
make sure you watch out for their frequencies
as usual in hurricane season. So please try to
stay clear of them on the air as they work to
try to help people out and you can listen in
on that as well. And as a part of that I just
saw release W1AW is going to actually be off
the air on Friday. They've suspended their bulletins
because of that. So just a heads up that W1AW
bulletins and practice and that kind of thing
won't be on on Friday. Also we had a request
to do some t -shirts for the show and With a
satellite theme now on the back. We have a couple
of slogans. We do the the takeoff of Les Nessman
from WKRP who always signed off may the good
news be yours and we did may the good DX be yours,
but We've also done a couple of other slogans
on the back and and there was a request that
we do some satellite slogans so we actually tossed
some around on Twitter and I think we've got
one picked up but I don't have everything quite
ready to go just yet, but if you're interested
in getting one of those, be aware that I'll have
a form online that you can fill out and sign
up for buying one of those soon. So watch the
social media outlets. and we'll post the information
on those shirts here in the next week or two
on how you can order those. And we're going to
do a limited edition order of that one. So if
you're interested in that, make sure you're,
you're watching for that and we'll talk about
it a little bit next week, I'm sure. But I'll
be back with Lee and we'll talk about the U S
Coast Guard Cutter Courier exhibit right after
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Rapp takes the rig, he breaks through the pile
up, he's on 80, now 40, now 20, 15, 10, two meters,
touchdown, Hamtok Live. Welcome back to HamTalk
Live. Thanks to ICOM for their support. Check
them out at icomamerica .com slash amateur. And
tonight we have Lee Hite, K8 CLI with us. He's
one of the lead docents at the National Voice
of America Museum of Broadcasting in Westchester,
Ohio. Lee is a retired electronics engineer with
a passion for investigating technical issues.
occasionally surrounded with some mystery and
often bridging several fields of technology.
He was licensed in 1954 and is active with the
Mason, Ohio and Warren County CERT teams. He
also engineers wind chimes and biomass bricks.
So he does it all. Lee, welcome to HamTalk Live.
Well, thank you, Neil. Very happy to be here
and thanks for the invitation. We appreciate
it. Well, I always enjoy seeing you and the people
over at the Voice of America Museum whenever
I can and try to help out as I can over there.
I'm back at work again and it's been a little
while and Gary tells me there's all kinds of
things that have changed already since I was
last there about seven or eight weeks ago. So
we may have to talk about that a little bit,
but one of the things that has changed is this
new exhibit. At the museum on the USC GC courier.
So Tell us the story about this boat and how
it's connected to the history of the voice of
America Okay. Yeah, it's it's quite a fascinating
story I've got a little background here to give
you as we lead into this but as we all know World
War two ended in 1945 and it wasn't but just
a few years later around 1947 that we defined
this 45 -year period called the Cold War. And
the U .S. government was doing a number of things
to try to provide a defense for threats from
the Cold War. They commissioned the development
of a nuclear airplane, a nuclear -powered airplane,
the ICBMs and the Polaris submarines. Two of
those, of course, turned out to be very successful.
Well, in addition to that, that's all hardware
based. They decided that the Word is a very powerful
weapon and while the VOA had been on the air
since 1942, they continued on the air after the
end of the war and became a very important tool
during the Cold War. During that period, they
transmitted into Russia, they transmitted to
a lot of parts of the world. but certainly Russia
was top of the list. VOA had three facilities,
one in Delano, California, and us here in Bethany,
Ohio, and Greenville, North Carolina, and all
three facilities broadcast into Russia. The basic
message, tell the truth and let the world decide,
and was just trying to get our view of things
broadcast into Russia. So that went on for a
while, and by early 50s, 58 -51, Russia was catching
on to the fact that we were a pretty prominent
force in the radio world in Russia, and they
began jamming, well they had been jamming all
along, but they got stronger transmitters, bigger
signals, and was jamming the BOA signals coming
out of the United States. We all practiced a
technique called cuddling, which is we will,
the VOA would come up beside an existing frequency
that the Soviets were using and broadcast. And
that was done deliberately so that when they
tried to jam the VOA signal, they would inadvertently
jam their own signal. It was a very broadband.
Acoustic generator sounded like a coffee grinder
going off, but it would splatter all over the
band So that worked for a while, but eventually
they got stronger and stronger transmitters and
The government decided we needed to do something
about it Harry Truman was running for president
and had Proposed a what was called a ring of
truth Around Russia. He wanted to put 14 Transmitting
sites circling Russia each site at a 1 million
watt capacity So here we would have 14 1 million
watt transmitters around Russia and that Congress
thought it was a good idea and actually funded
the beginning of it. They funded some 42 million
dollars to get started But unfortunately after
the election, Congress had second thoughts and
they cut back to only one station and that turned
out to be the U .S. Coast Guard Cutter Courier.
They had other stations in England and Greece
that were transmitting into Russia. They would
pick up the signal out of the United States,
and they were called relay stations, and they
would then retransmit into Russia. But we needed
to get a very strong signal into Russia. And
so what they decided to do was to build a very
powerful floating broadcast station. And they
looked around to do it. This was not the first
time the VOA had used a floating broadcast station.
this was going to be the most powerful and did
not want guns or ammunition or a threat involved
so normally they would look to the Navy to do
this but in this case they looked to the Coast
Guard because they were non -comfrontational
and so they commissioned a ship with the Coast
Guard it was actually a ship built for the Navy
that was never used and was commissioned in 1952
and contained, actually contained four transmitters.
They had one large transmitter that was what
we call medium wave or the AM broadcast band.
It was 150 kilowatt transmitter. And then they
had two 35 kilowatt short wave transmitters.
And then a smaller Collins unit, three kilowatt
that they use for ship to shore. And so that
then was deployed. They were stationed off an
island of Greece called Rhodes. It's way down
in the key of islands off from Greece. It's very
close to Turkey, about just 10, 11 miles southwest
of Turkey. And we're stationed off that island.
And so they were there for 12 years broadcasting
and had a phenomenal success during that process.
Well, that's what you call going mobile with
kilowatts of power. That's going mobile for sure.
And, uh, you know, we'd talk about, uh, you know,
relays, uh, you know, well, we need a relay to
check into this net. Well, that that's a relay
now. That's some powerful, powerful signals out
of that schmoke. The VOA in general used a lot
of relays. We here in Bethany, as was Delano,
California and Greenville, North Carolina, we
were called relay stations because all the program
material eventually came out of Washington, D
.C. It started in New York and then moved to
Washington, D .C. BOA is still on the air today
and still producing program material. And now
it's broadcast over the internet, satellite,
and cellular, and that kind of thing. But we
all were relay stations. And in our case, we
would pick it up from Worceton, DC, and then
broadcast it. And it would either go directly,
like into South America or Africa, or be picked
up by one of our relay stations over there and
retransmitted. Yeah, now one of the things that
I always found interesting when I first discovered
the museum and started making trips over there
and learning more about this was that you know
with all those transmitters and everything there
was not a microphone in the place and like you
said it was it was all relay because You didn't
want to take a chance of somebody taking over
the station Yes, absolutely we had guards here
at Bethany, but it was not so much a fear of
breaking in because we did not have microphones,
it's more because of the re -enter rhombic antennas
that were used were highly secret. The only ones
in the world, they were able to take a normal
rhombic and while you will normally waste 50
% of the power at the tail end, the opposite
end of the feed line, they... Took that power
and phased it and took it back to the input and
they had the rhombic running at 98 % efficiency
It was like a quarter million watts in and we
got 1 .1 million watts of actual RF output out
of the thing. So it was For that reason they
guarded the property quite carefully, but it
was never for a microphone Well, that's setting
up, you know getting the courier off and running
and We found a little bit of maybe a ham radio
direct connection We'll talk about it or still
not real clear on everything yet, but as The
preparations were going for the courier they
wanted to do a test run and I found the call
sign that they were doing for the test run. So
tell us about that. Well, that is terribly interesting,
Neil. And before I directly answer that question,
I think the answer will have a lot more meaning
if I tell another situation that happened. As
I mentioned earlier, the courier was not the
first floating broadcast station. Actually, the
first floating station for the VOA. was the USS
Texas. And they were deployed, as I recall, in
the Mediterranean, I think, to get VOA's message
into Nazi Germany. And they only had a very small
transmitter. It was like five kilowatt transmitter.
But they were deployed quickly, I think November
1942. And the situation is why the courier needed
to do testing. What actually happened was they
never tested the USS Texas transmitters. They
were installed, tuned up into a dummy load, and
yeah, they worked okay. And off they went, and
they sailed into the Mediterranean. Well, their
first assignment... Was to bomb some targets
on shore, so they moved up close to shore and
fired two a terror artillery shells both of them
hit their target Unfortunately the recoil from
those two firings completely destroyed the transmitter
so they were they were only on the air for eight
hours and That completely ended their life as
a broadcast station So what does that have to
do with the courier? Well Lessons learned you
might say they when they deployed the courier
they put the courier on a six -week shakedown
Normal for the Navy no normal for the Coast Guard
to go out and shake down a new ship and They
when they were first deployed they were deployed
under the call sign Vagabond able and that was
their airway call sign And then eventually when
they were on station in Rhodes, Greece, they
had another call sign. But during the testing
phase, they used this amateur radio call sign.
And while I do not know the exact reason, all
my research, it looks like they were very fastidious
about being careful of not being confrontational.
And I think during this entire testing phase,
they wanted to have just a very generic call
sign. Amateur radio was non -convertational,
very generic. And so I suspect that that amateur
radio call sign was used for that reason. But
they put anchor in Panama for about 10 days.
And people all over the world could listen to
them, particularly in North America, particularly
the United States and Canada. They had a QSL
bureau. down there that you could write in and
give your signal report. They very much wanted
to know the signal report. And they would QSL
back. And that was a very successful operation.
And then they moved on to other ports of anchor.
sure why the call side and if that works or not,
but we found KU2XAJ as the the call sign that
they were using for that and so But they were
in broadcast, you know shortwave broadcast frequencies.
So We don't know the whole story here yet. Maybe
maybe maybe somebody listening will know the
rest of the story, but And we'll turn it into
a Paul Harvey show. But yeah, it'd be kind of
interesting to find out there. But that was the
call sign, KU2XAJ, that they were using apparently
with the shakedown mode down in the canal zone.
Yep. And after they quit the testing phase and
used the KU2XAJ call sign, once they were deployed,
on the off the island of Rhodes, they've used
the operational call sign, the NFKW, November
Foxtrot kilowatt whiskey. And that was their
operational call sign. And so I would think they
wanted to be careful not to use their operational
call sign. But like you say, we I still don't
know how that came about. I never found a copy
of their license. And I'm not sure they were
had to have a license be in the government. But
I still don't know the answer to that. Yeah,
it was interesting just happened to run across
that as a preparing for the show so We looked
into it a little bit and Lee's looked quite a
bit into it. So we appreciate that Well, let's
we've got a couple of minutes here before we
need to take a break. But let's talk a little
bit about the museum at or the exhibit at the
museum. How did that come about and tell us a
little bit about what you can expect to see if
you make a visit there while the exhibits in
the museum? Yes, we were very honored to have
the traveling exhibit from the USS Coast Guard
Cutter Courier visit us last year. They provided
13 large, they're about 32 inches by 40 inches,
very large posters, very well done. That describes
the entire history and beginning through the
end of the courier. And we had that displayed
in the Hanley Hall in the museum. And it was
so popular and we had people come in that were
either associated or had family members associated
with the courier. And a lot of encouragement
to keep it. Of course, we had to give it up back
to the Rhodes organization. And so we went ahead
and funded and duplicated all of those hanging
posters, if you will. And a brand new hallway
just outside of the control room has been finished.
With nice lighting and video and we're and we
have those Mounted on the wall and it and it's
just it's very meaningful to to walk down that
hallway and read the story When it was dedicated
we had several courier people come in to the
museum actually some rhodians They were absolutely
fascinating to to talk with Living here in America.
We just don't understand the value of our culture
When they came in for the dedication, I had an
opportunity to talk with almost every one of
them. And they were so amazingly appreciative
of what the United States did to the Voice of
America message. And in particular, particularly,
the island of Rhodes was pretty well devastated
after the war. And our good neighbor policies
helped to rebuild that island. The crewmen that
were on board ship would would go to shore and
actually there were the captain of the ship arranged
a mixer to get the guys to meet the gals on shore
and over the course of the 12 year period there
were a little bit more than 95 marriages that
took place to courier men and I came across another
interesting tidbit was the American Brides dress
was absolutely revered. And so the first woman
to get married to a courier crewman ordered an
American bride's dress. And it was so popular
that it was repurposed five more times. It wound
up being on six brides. They retrofitted it and
modified it to fit five other women. And so six
women got married in the same dress. because
it was the thing to do on the island of Rhodes.
Well, that's some pretty cool stuff. Well, we
need to take a break, but we will come back and
talk some more with Lee, and we'll give you a
chance to call in and ask your questions. Again,
that phone number is 812 -638 -4261. We'll come
back and do all that with Lee right after this
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-HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261. Now, here's more
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This weekend. They're in Peoria, Illinois for
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pl -259 .com and you can find HamTalk Live at
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9 p .m eastern time And be sure to check us out
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And it's
time for your calls. So now's your chance. If
you want to call in and ask a question to Lee
K8CLI about the Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting
or the Courier Exhibit, give us a call right
now. It's 812 -638 -4261. 812 -NET -HAM -1. Or
you can also drop a tweet on Twitter. We're at
HamTalk Live on Twitter. And even if you do Skype,
we'll take Skype call too. It's HamTalk Live
on Skype. Well, Lee, while we're waiting on the
calls to come in, I know you want to talk about
a special event coming up here in just a little
over a week, I guess it is. You've got a gala
and a fundraiser, but also a special event station
going on on the 22nd. So why don't you tell everybody
about that? Yes. Thank you, Neil. Part of the
BOA, National BOA Broadcast Museum, Museum of
Broadcasting, we have a very important part of
the museum is the Westchester Amateur Radio Association.
They operate under the call sign WCA BOA, Whiskey
Charlie 8, Voice of America. And on September
22, we will be celebrating BOA's 74th anniversary.
And we'll have a special event station on that
day. I don't remember the hours right now, but
I think around 8 or 9 in the morning until 5
o 'clock in the afternoon. And we'll be mostly
on 40 and 20. On 40 meters, we generally operate
in the vicinity of 7 .268 megahertz, 7 .268.
20 meters typically operate around 14 .268. So
if you're available, stop in, say hello. We are
sending special QSL certificates through a new
process that will be explained when you make
contact with us. And so we'd love to hear from
you and give us a call when you hear us on Saturday,
September 22. 22nd. Yep. Yeah. And then talk
a little bit about what's going on that evening
too. We have, uh, we're funded by donations,
uh, from various sources and we have what we
call the gala, which is a fundraiser event, but
we have over 120 some people attend the event
and we have a band called rock the radio, uh,
that evening and a dinner, a dinner kind of arrangement.
And it's intended to be a fundraiser, but we
have an incredible crew of docents at the museum.
Our docents will be there to answer questions,
and it's a really fun evening, Neil, a lot of
fun. OK, so if you're interested in Rock the
Radio, that's the... The gala on the 22nd you
can check that out at the website That's vo a
museum org and you can check out that out and
see about tickets and that kind of thing for
Rock the radio at 6 p .m. On the 22nd and if
you can't make it to Westchester, Ohio you can
get on 40 or 20 and Get a hold of Mike and the
guys and they'll get you a QSL card. So, tell
me what... Let me put the phone number out here
again. 812 -638 -4261. 812 -NET -HAM -1 or tweet
us. Ham talk live if you have a question about
the museum or the Information on the courier
that we're talking about tonight Tell us a little
bit about some of the other updates. I know Gary
has told me that that I wouldn't recognize the
place It's only been a few weeks. So What else
has been going on? We continue to upgrade and
modernize the museum from its operational days
as a transmitting relay station. We have a very
well put together, well there's actually four
museums in the building. Of course the VOA museum,
we have the modernized control room when the
stations shut down. Very well equipped and we
take people in there and talk about. how the
station ran. We preserved one of the Collins
250kw transmitters. We show you that. And also
the antenna switch out back is preserved. That's
a 22 by 6 antenna switch. It's an amazing sight
to see. And then we talk about special English
that was specific to the VOA. And then the other
three museums, we have a room just dedicated
to Paul Crosley. He was such a prolific inventor.
He invented and marketed over, I counted one
day over 32 different products that were not
radio related. They were other devices. So we
go through a lot of that in that room. Just recently
we have another room that's a radio timeline
which we trace really from the days of the beginning
of. discovering magnetism and Voltaia and Hertz.
We trace all the way that up to the satellite.
And just a few days ago, Neil, I installed an
antenna, a replica of the antenna that's on the
Titanic in that room so people can see the size
of the antenna. It was called a twin T. The Titanic
actually had two antennas, one that was configured
to to optimize the signal in the forward direction,
and the other one optimized it to the rear. And
we will have on display a nice model of the Titanic.
And the importance there is that, of course,
we all know the story of the Titanic, but there's
a very positive story out of it because over
710 people were saved because of wireless technology.
It was all Spark transmitters, but Spark worked,
and it worked very well. Over 12 ships heard
the Titanic signal within a 500 mile radius.
And so we've got that antenna to try to just
draw attention to that wireless part. And then
on the other side of the museum, we have what's
called the Media Heritage Museum, which if you
grew up around Southwest Ohio, you were familiar
with the television and radio from the beginning
here in Cincinnati. And we trace all of that
quite well. There's from Ruth Lyons to Larry
Smith's puppets and all of the personalities,
a lot of the hardware, TV cameras and broadcast
replication of broadcast studios. So it's an
amazing place to come see. If you ever get down
to Southwest Ohio, be sure and stop in. We're
open every weekend now, Friday and Saturday,
1 p .m. to 4 p .m. And we have a fantastic staff
of docents. to help. You can take the tour yourself
or a docent can show you around. It's your choice.
Let me correct you there, Lee. You said Friday
and Saturday. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Saturday and
Sunday. Thank you. Thank you for catching that.
Yeah. Every Saturday and Sunday, 1 p .m. to 4
p .m. Okay. And if you're a ham, you can also
visit the station there at WC8VOA. Work a pile
up usually at least Yes, you can operate whether
or not you'll get a pile up or not. Well most
of the time it's a pile up Yep. Yep. Mike Mike
Braun is typically at the operating station along
with several others Carl and Bob etc and Mark
but Always invite people to come in and operate
take the station to make some contacts we have
Even if the person is not licensed, as long as
we have a licensed control operator, we have
a lot of non -licensed people get on the air
and absolutely have a blast. Neil, they can't
believe they just talked to Italy or Japan or
something like that, you know? Yeah, and great
room there set up with all kinds of cool stuff.
It's always a joy to get over there, and I enjoy
getting on the air from there. So if you get
a chance, stop in. And I know many of you have
actually been there. And people come in and say,
yeah, yeah, I heard it on HamTalk Live. So that
was kind of cool to have that happen on one of
my, well, I think it was the last trip over.
I think that happened. VOAMuseum .org is where
you can find more information about the museum,
and there's a link there to the WC8VOA website
as well, which is WC8VOA .org, right? Correct.
Yeah, okay. Just making sure. Well let's give
one more opportunity here for calls tonight.
It's 812 -638 -4261. I've been checking the...
tweets here too and haven't seen anything but
we know most of our audience doesn't listen to
us live they listen to the replay so we know
that happens but if you're listening live we'd
love to hear from you it's eight one two six
three eight four two six one so all kinds of
things happening and Okay, I'm gonna pull this
one out of the hat and I think you're prepared
for this but we didn't put it in the in the plan
Talk about this this new rhombic that you guys
are working on. Oh, yes quite exciting the The
VOA station here in Bethany when it was operational
had 22 rhombics Wrong I said that wrong. We had
22 antennas Fourteen of them were rhombics and
eight of them were, we had two curtain antennas
and each curtain had four dipoles in it. But
we had 14 rhombics. And normally, as I'd mentioned
earlier, when you feed a rhombic at one end,
you terminate the other end in the impedance,
I think it's 600 ohms. And that gives us its
directionality forward and a fairly narrow beam
width and that's what the amateur radio station
is going to put up is we've done some testing
on a temporary rhombic and now we are in the
process of acquiring 80 -foot poles and it will
be put up in the traditional diamond shape and
It'll be broadband by using three wires on the
sides Each leg will have three wires As a conductors
which helps to broadband the the antenna But
we're quite excited. It's it's it's in process
right now Neil. They just had a meeting two days
ago About acquiring the 80 foot poles and once
we get those up the wire and everything else
will go up pretty quickly So we'll let everybody
know with all they'll let you know through the
ham station and we'll let you know on the website
All right, very good. So Some more to look forward
to over there at the Voice of America Museum
of Broadcasting and let me take one last look
here at Twitter and make sure we're not missing
anyone's questions here tonight, but I think
we have everything covered. Lee, it's great as
always to talk to you and thanks for coming on
the show and talking with everybody here tonight.
and letting us know about the new exhibit with
the courier and some of the history there. And
come back any time. We'd love to have you back.
Well, thank you, Neil. And certainly on behalf
of the museum and the Westchester Amateur Radio
Association, we thank you for the opportunity
to be on the program. We're still trying to get
our message out to everyone. And this was certainly
a very important vehicle. So thank you for everything
you're doing. Happy to be here and we'll see
you next time. All right, very good and oh just
just did come in here I've got a note from Jim
Wilson K5 in D if I can get my phone to cooperate
here Great story about the courier. I have QSLs
from Rhodes Greece VOA and Didn't have any idea
that was that was around there. So It's good
to hear from Jim there tonight and Didn't realize
that that that was a ship. So now now, you know,
so All right. Well, we're going to finish things
up here tonight but thanks for coming on the
show and and that is a wrap for this week's edition
of ham talk live thanks to Lehigh to k8 CLI and
everybody out there in cyberspace for Listening
and chiming in and invite you back next Thursday
night at 9 p .m. Eastern time We plan on having
Don Greenbaum in one DG. I guess I should say
we need to make sure he's coming but that's the
plan to do a little recap on the Baker Island
the expedition and You can catch up with what's
coming up on the show by going to hamtalklive
.com click on the show schedule link and you
can see for sure who's coming up and If you like
ham talk live, please leave us a review on it
or wherever you listen. That helps others find
us faster, so we'd appreciate it if you would
do that. So for now, this is Neal Rapp, WB9VPG,
saying 7375, and may the good DX be yours. Bye
bye.