Current Weather Conditions at W3ZH

Information provided by Kurt Fritsch WA3TOY - kfritsch@arinc.com from the ARINC, Inc. Employee Web Site.

All of ARINC’s early engineering staff were Hams.

Some additional information on Herbert Hoover Jr. can be found at http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2001/05/23/3/

 Herbert Hoover, III, was W6ZH and past away on February 04, 2010.

The ARINC Amateur Radio Club maintains a club station located on the third floor of Building 4 in Annapolis. The station, under the call sign of W3ZH (former call sign of Aeronautical Radio’s first president, Herbert Hoover, Jr.) is equipped with  (HF) radios, and several VHF radios for 144 MHz and an ICOM “all mode” radio for VHF/UHF mode operations. The station is capable of operating in several modes including voice, Morse code, and digital communications using fldigi. Our future plans include developing a satellite communications capability. The ARINC ARC also maintains a Weather Station, of which the data is sent via the internet to Weather Underground. The identifier is Annapolis: W3ZH (KMDANNAP13). Also the data is sent via the internet to the Citizens Weather Observer Program (CWOP) and APRS can be viewed on the CWOP site and on FindU.com site as well. 

Clicking on the this link will take you to the Weather Underground site where you can view the current conditions at W3ZH in a more detiled format.

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/hdfForecast?query=21401&searchType=WEATHER

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KMDANNAP13  and go to the Weather Underground site where a detailed weather history format can be veiwed including graphs etc. Clicking on the graphic at the top of this page should also link you to the detailed data format.

The club use to run a Collins rig, but that now resides in the ARINC museum.

Hurricane Hugo 

On September 18, 1989, amateur radio station KB4BQM reported that the St. Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands) airport “took a direct hit and evidently was closed down and severely damaged by Hurricane Hugo." The island was without power and navigational aids were out of service. 

Meanwhile the ARINC Amateur Radio Club had been actively working to try to establish contact with Puerto Rico to learn the state of the San Juan Airport and the condition of the ARINC Comm Center. From the time Hugo struck at 10:30 a.m. EST Paul Moreland, Warren Osterloh, and Bill Trussel had manned the Annapolis club station in Building 1 while George Boring assisted from his home station just down the street. 

They made contact at 1430 with WP4DMT in San Juan, who was operating on emergency power. Paul, Warren, and Bill asked him to call the ARINC San Juan Comm Center to check on the status of our people there. WP4DMT was able to get through on the phone and said the Comm Center had plenty of people but no power and the worst was over with no injuries to report. 

No other Puerto Rican stations were heard until late afternoon. ARINC later learned that the weather in the Puerto Rican area had cleared off after taking in 15 inches of rain and 140 knot winds. Also, in the Virgin Islands, the St. Thomas control tower was badly damaged with about 80% of the homes in the St. Croix area damaged. 

During this crisis the ARINC Amateur Radio Club operators provided an invaluable service by supplying emergency communications to check on the welfare of our fellow co-workers in San Juan.