ZS6NOM.
On the 24th and 25th of November, Leon Lessing, ZR6ANA organized an amateur station ZS6NOM on behalf of the Battle Group South as part of it’s exhibit at the Military museum in Johannesburg. He setup the whole station single handed.
he set up an 1980’s long-range patrol camp and operated the radios. Fortunately the rain which delayed the erection of antennas didn’t dampen Leon’s enthusiasm. He actually slept over at the museum on Saturday night! The equipment used was two B25’s and a FT-101 ZD.
Unfortunately this same precipitation was the cause of the relatively low number of contacts made on all bands, 18 to be exact, 80m = 2, 40m = 13, 20m = 2, and 15m = 1. I wonder if these figures “mean anything” regarding prop. conditions or “normal ham usage” over the week-end.
Interestingly enough Leon has had a 160m (1840 kHz) contact with Denny ZR6ZIP on 07-11-2007. (Has anyone else used the 160m band recently ???)
There were German, Afrika Korps, British, American and South African air-force equipment exhibits as well. One visitor to this station served in the Afrika Corps of the German army. He received an Iron cross first class for destroying 3 tanks with a PAK40 anti tank cannon. A cannon similar to the one used is on display at the war museum.

ZS1MUS & ZS6MUS.
These stations are still going strong but we wish that the propagation conditions between the two were just as strong.
A recent visitor to Swartkop Museum Wireless Room was OM Richard Dismore ZS5TF. Over the past few years he has been busy with the restoration of a T1154 transmitter and a R1155 receiver. He is still looking for a matching power which was used with this combination TX & RX. He is also looking for a “bath tub” morse key and the antenna switch type-J which goes with this arrangement. It is not the usual type of antenna change-over but also connected the DF (direction finding) loop to the receiver when necessary. An important feature was to prevent accidentally transmitting into the loop while the R1155 receiver was being used for DF purposes.

JERICHO.
No, not in 4XA but the TV story about a small town near Denver (USA). The story is about how the small town folk handle the situation when this nearby city is hit by a nuclear bomb.
The part that interested me was an ex-policeman who tunes in on a ham band and can read the morse. This scene was shown when the ex-cop at the controls of an FT101-F (I’m sure it wasn’t an FT101-E). The annoying part is that when I heard the CW I dashed to the TV set, pen and paper in hand only to have the scene change as I started to write!
I wonder if the HamNet chaps took a few notes about this programme? Hi Hi!!

The rest of the address information stays the same, namely;
e-mail = davegemmell@bmknet.co.za
and P.O.BOX 77, IRENE, 0062 and TEL: and FAX: 012 – 667 2153