[Milsurplus] USS Midway

[Telegrapher at att.net]

About two weeks ago i went ot San Diego to visit the USS Midway for the 2nd time.  Not much open the first time around but this time it was a nice trip.  I had wanted to go and see the ham shack operation of NI6IW which is the Midway ham call.  Well no one seemed to know about that operation so i started looking around.  Now take my words as a "non" squid so i don't know navy terms and designations but maybe you can follow along anyway.

Up on the Flight deck i went over to the Island where all the operations are conducted from.  Captains and Admirals sleep there along with the guys controlling the movement of airplanes and ordenance and all that stuff.  One sign said "Captains and Admirals Quarters" so i went thru that doorway.  Don't know how they got any sleep in there so close to the deck with all the noise.  Fairly nice quarters though i suppose for the time period.  Thru the door past some other rooms i came upon apparently a comm room.  Saw 6 mod 28's in there.  Five ASR's and a KSR. All were covered with plastic display type coverings but each had printed out a message so you had to believe they were working when shut down.  the three at the other end of the room were not accessable and taped off but if you knew what you were looking at then it wasn't a problem.  Nice clean room.  thru the next door was or must have been receiver central or control?  I don't know but there were about 25 R-1051 receivers in racks in the middle of the room.  Around the walls was a bunch of other equipment, maybe some kind of mux's?  Don't know.  I did take a bunch of pictures so if anyone want's to see the stuff i can ship them out to you for identification.  The 1051's were all in very nice shape.  A couple of knobs were missing and some of the frequency change controls didn't move but otherwise very nice indeed.  

One of these days i'll find someone who can tell me how to find the Midway ham shack.  If you get to San Diego and have never been on a floating airfield, it was indeed impressive to this land lubber!  Great admiration for those fellows.

Larry
W0OGH