Hi!
While I was just in California recently, I drove to Oceanside - along the coast north of San Diego, next to the huge Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. I was hoping to see the USNS Sgt. William R. Button, the ship Jim ND9M has been on and operating from lately. After some driving around, I was able to see his ship offshore on Friday morning before I left the San Diego area. I had seen photos of the ship on the Internet, so I had an idea what to look for.
After seeing an e-mail from ND9M on Friday, I considered myself lucky to see his ship. It had gone out to deeper water, in advance of the tsunami from the recent earthquake in Japan. It had come back to its anchorage by the time I went out there. I was able to see the ship, and took several photos of it in the 1800-1900 UTC (1000-1100 local time) hour. I posted a couple of those photos at:
http://www.qsl.net/wd9ewk/pics/nd9m/
The first photo was taken at the north end of Oceanside Harbor, very close to Camp Pendleton. The second photo was taken about 1/2 mile (almost 1km) south of that location, on the beach. The helicopter deck on the rear of the ship was visible, which is where Jim has been operating from. These two photos are at a lower resolution than the original 7-megapixel photos, so they don't take much time to download. If anyone wants to see the originals, please e-mail me directly and I'll send them to you.
More information about Jim's ship is available at (among other places):
http://www.msc.navy.mil/inventory/ships.asp?ship=21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_Prepositioning_ship#2nd_Lieutenant_Joh...
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/