My apologies for missing the 20/0914Z FO29 and AO51 passes last night. I set my alarm to get up in plenty of time, but discovered far too late that I'd set the alarm based on tonight's passes instead of last night's and wound up missing them by just a few minutes. And while I was admonishing myself for my own mistake, I received an e-mail telling me that there had been quite a few ops waiting for me, as if I needed a reminder of my foul up. Oh well...

We were in EJ49 for a short time at midday today during which there was an AO27 pass. We on the ship also found ourselves in a nice little windstorm (40 MPH sustained) at just the wrong time. I set up on the flight deck as usual, but had to hold down the step ladder with a foot on the bottom rung and my arm on the rig to prevent the station from toppling. The winds were pushing the antenna all over the place which further hampered the already very low elevation ops.

I was able to make four contacts during the two minutes or so that I could see the satellite. Later on, K8YSE sent me a recording of the pass, and after listening to it, I'm frankly surprised I made any contacts at all! There were so many non-stop tail-ending calls that I really don't see how I got through for anyone to hear me answer them to begin with! Almost as surprising was that on top of the heavy pileup QRM, one of the few successful QSOs was with N5AFV who was using omni-directional antennas for both the uplink and downlink; Allen punched through on my end with no problem!

Right after the pass, I took digital photos of the GPS and clock for QTH documentation as I regularly do and almost lost the rig when a wind gust literally flipped the rig off the ladder's shelf while I still held the ladder down. I dropped the camera and was able to grab the rig's carrying handle just as the rig started downward, so luckily it didn't hit the deck. Surprisingly, the camera survived the five-foot fall on to the steel deck with barely a scratch. Not bad for an over-the-counter Nikon!

Tonight, we'll be passing through EJ58 for about three hours, but unfortunately there won't be any passes available until we're already through that grid. For the same reason, I probably will not be able to put out EJ78 which we'll be in for about 2-1/2 hours tomorrow at midday. I'll still keep an eye on the GPS just in case the unexpected happens.

The oh-dark-30 FO29 and AO51 passes tonight overlap each other a great deal. I'll start out on FO29 since its footprint will cover much of the ham population before AO51's footprint really becomes usable for my QTH.

As we approach the Canal, we're advancing our ship's clock by one hour tonight, our thirteenth clock change since we left Diego Garcia. Starting tomorrow, we'll be on CDT, and my work day will run from 1300-2200Z. After that, we'll have only one more clock advance during this long trip, and we'll finally be done with messing with the clocks.

Speaking of the Canal, my IARP was issued on 7 March while I was still at San Diego, so I'm good to go for operating in Panamanian waters and through the Canal. We won't be stopping at Panama, so there won't be any chance of QSOs for DXCC credit, but the grid squares will still be fair game.

Here's the list:

Planned

VO52 - 21/0250Z - EJ59

FO29 - 21/1003Z - EJ68

AO51 - 21/1012Z - EJ68

VO52 - 21/1454Z - EJ68

AO7 - 22/0003Z - EJ77

VO52 - 22/0132Z - EJ77 or EJ87

FO29 - 22/1055Z - EJ87 or EJ97

AO51 - 22/1113Z - probably EJ97

Probable, but not certain

AO51 - 21/2108Z - EJ77

FO29 - 21/2131Z - EJ77

AO51 - 21/2247Z - EJ77

VO52 - 22/0309Z - EJ87

FO29 - 22/0907Z - EJ87 or EJ97 - I'll have a better idea tomorrow evening on this pass and AO51's a few minutes later.

AO51 - 22/0933Z - EJ87 or EJ97

73,

Jim, ND9M / VQ9JC