A Wonderful Aeronatical Mobile Contact

 29 July 2024

20S 0943Z 0543L K8JSM/AM Sean, pilot on a 757/300. En route from San Francisco to Orlando with 246 souls on board, including a bunch of kids going to Disneyland.  Was 35,000 feet over Louisiana (12 miles East of Shreveport) when I first spoke to him.  (He had been in QSO with Andrew VK6IK in Western Australia.  I could hear Andrew also.) Sean was using the 400 W Rockwell-Collins transceiver on the plane (that's his picture of the control panel, above), with the antenna vertical in the back vertical stabilizer (rudder). I told him I was running 20 watts from a homebrew rig to a vertical ¼ wave ground plane antenna about 70 feet up; he speculated that the fact that we were both vertically polarized must have been helping.   Sean said he also pilots 767s transatlantic. 

I really had two contacts with him,   Around 0600 local he was calling CQ and no one was answering.  So I called him again and we continued:  I told him about the Aeronautical Mobile contact I had had from Samana.  I also told him about my contacts with MIR and RS-10 (and the RS-10 robot!) from the Dominican Republic 1992-1996.  I told him that Elisa had been present for many of the contacts with Norm Thagard on Mir station (Elisa walked in the HI7 shack at around this time – Sean said hello.)  Sean said he has been a ham for a long time – since before he was a pilot.  He has built a 2 meter “tape measure and PVC”  antenna.  I told him we have a little aircraft radio and use it to listen to the tower at Punta Cana airport, and to aircraft calling the regional ATC in Santo Domingo.  Sean says he too has a little airband receiver and often uses it to listen to airplane tower traffic.  Sean said the airline encourages this kind of contact because it is a way to keep pilots alert on long overnight flights (other pilots have other activities to do the same).  As we spoke he was waiting for a meal (salmon).  He mentioned that he could see the constellation Orion out the window;  I told him I had been looking at Orion in low in the East just before talking to him.  In the end, Sean  had to sign as the plane crossed into Florida and aircraft pilot duties took precedence.  

More info on Sean here: https://www.qrz.com/db/K8JSM     

Thanks Sean!