S9SS ceased operation in December 2006. Anyone using that call sign after that date is a pirate.

All S9SS logs are on LoTW.

S9SS QSL manager N4JR has logs only for S9SS. Please do not send QSLs for any of my other overseas operations to him.

NOW RETIRED IN NORTHWESTERN NORTH CAROLINA. ACTIVE AS KY4P.

I grew up in Lumberton, North Carolina whereI was born in 1942. Starting out as an avid SWL with a Hallicrafters S-53A about 1954, I was first licensed as a Novice with the call sign KN4OVA around 1957. After a year as a novice, I became K4OVA. Some time in the early eighties I upgraded to Extra Class and received the call sign KY4P.

After 24 years working in commercial radio broadcast engineering in North Carolina, I entered the Foreign Service with the Voice of America in 1989. Over the years I held the DX call signs A22AA, S92SS, SV0LM, A25/KY4P, and finally S9SS.

Though I acknowledge my inate deficiencies as a CW operator, that mode is still my favorite. Never an outstanding CW operator at my best, I now have to resort to sending mostly "canned" computer generated CW due to a neural problem, resulting from an old injury, that affects my arms and hands. I reserve my greatest admiration for highly skilled CW operators.

The S9SS QTH was on the 346 acre site of the IBB Sao Tome Transmitting station where I served as Station Manager. That made me somewhat of an "alligator" much of the time. Sharing a QTH with five 100 kW shortwave broadcasting transmitters, a 600 kW transmitter on 1530 Khz, and another on 945 kHz with 20 kW resulted in very poor receiving conditions much of the time. Use of an antenna tuner, tunable filter, and sometimes the receiver's attenuator, often sufficed to overcome signal overload. When all these transmitters were on the air, the on-frequency noise floor rose in the ham bands. Even worse, there were often periods of intense intermittent wide band noise bursts of varying durations due to various system faults. On the low bands, a nearly constant extremely high level of Equatorial QRN also seriously degraded reception. Despite these problems, S9SSaveraged more than 1000 QSO's per month in casual operation, mostly on Friday and Saturday evenings when I did not have to arise early the following morning. Sometimes, success despite these poor receiving conditions required patience on the part of the other stations.

Many pictures are available in albums pertaining to Sao Tome at http://picasaweb.google.com/s9ss160m.

S50U has an S9SS log check on his web site at http://s50u.s50e.si/zacni.php?stran=s9ss .

73,

Charles Lewis - now KY4P

ex K4OVA, A22AA, S92SS, SV0LM, A25/KY4P. S9SS