[amsat-bb] Ham Radios on Princess Cruises

[Bill]

Hi Jerry,

Don't feel bad. My wife and I booked a 15 day Princess cruise out of San 
Francisco to Hawaii a couple of months ago. The itinerary had 4 sea days 
going and 4 coming back which would be great days for operating time. So 
three months before the cruise I started the permitting process. Got a 
permit from Bermuda to operate aboard in a few weeks and then after 
several weeks, after submitting the requested documentation (my license 
and authorization from Bermuda) received an email authorization from 
Princess Cruises permitting operation from the balcony ONLY.  But I was 
to check in with the electronics officer once on aboard before 
operating. So after loading up the gear and my nifty HF and 145/435 MHz 
balcony antennas in a separate carry-on along with the authorization 
paperwork, off we went. Cleared boarding customs without a problem. The 
next day I requested customer service to put me in touch with the 
electronics officer which was done. I showed him the paperwork from 
Princess along with the licenses and he said he would run it by the 
Captain. Hours later, customer service calls the room to tell that the 
Captain was denying permission to operate on his ship.

Well, what made matters worse after being resigned to just receiving and 
after setting up the HF antenna and listening, the bands were usually 
hopping. I guess that big salty sea really helps antennas.

So I guess we can cross off Princess as being Amateur Radio friendly.

I do have the email address for the chap in their Santa Clarita office 
who is/was responsible for Amateur operations if you want to get a 
further read on the matter. To be sure, he got a not too friendly email 
from me when we returned. It went unanswered.

Bill - N6GHz


On 5/24/2017 3:46 PM, Jerry Buxton wrote:
> This is a very interesting item.  Being a multi-time Princess cruiser, I
> have requested, received permission for, and taken ham radios on a dozen
> cruises over almost two decades.  Today, in following up on my
> unanswered request for our upcoming cruise, I was informed through our
> Princess travel agent that the department which handles the amateur
> radio requests says that there will be no more permissions given as ham
> radios have been added to the prohibited items list by Princess
> Security.  Interestingly, FRS is not on that same list.
>
> We had a bit of a discussion about it but of course the agent is not in
> any position to do more than handling the request to the person in
> charge of that, so there won't be any VP9/N0JY/MM on this cruise.  To
> make it worse, that would also prohibit even taking the HTs along for
> use on land as we tour the British Isles.  I am totally bummed.
>
> Does anybody on this list work for Princess Cruises, maybe have some
> thoughts on this?    :-)
>