[Boatanchors] code speed

[GEORGE MORTON]

Bill, et al - No, 90 wpm was not "standard"!!!  I certified at 52 wpm
leaving school at Imperial Beach, CA in '58.
In Vietnam there were radar tracking nets at about 50 wpm while typically
15-25 wpm for others.  In WWII
the 15-25 was a lot more "normal".  Brgds, Geo
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William L Howard" <wlhoward at verizon.net>
To: "boatanchors at qth.net" <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>; "armyradios"
<armyradios at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 6:12 PM
Subject: [Boatanchors] code speed


> >    In WWII, England had hundreds of monitoring radio sites listening
> >to  the German military communications.  Most of the information was
> fed
> >to  Bletchley Park, the secret and famous code breaking installation NW
> >of  London.   CW (Morse code) was primarily used for these
> >communications and  mostly, maybe all, of the English operators were
> >female.    I recently read that the MINIMUM speed required for the
> >listeners was  90 wpm.  Was code being sent at that speed and could
> >large numbers of  people copy at that speed?   As I struggle with my 5
> >to 7 wpm, 90 sounds awfully fast. 73,  Skip M  W7WGM
> -----------------------------------
> One of the problems would have been that any operator can send Morse
> faster
> than he can receive it. An army signaler just has to bear that in mind
> and
> keep his speed in check. But if these ladies were taking messages from
> agents in occupied Europe, they would have been dealing with some
> lonely,
> very nervous people.
>
> I'll try and dig out our old Morse manuals to see what speed was
> required.
> SF was still using Morse for HF transmissions in the 1980s. I assume its
> all
> finished now with burst transmission ability.
>
> Cheers
> Mike Mitchell
> ---------------------------------
> My Dad was a radio operator on B24's.flying out of England in late 1944
> and 1945.  He was trained to send CW at 15WPM and receive at 30WPM. He
> said that much of the limitation on receiving was the ability to copy
> the code.  He was copying 15WPM with a pencil and paper.  He said that
> much higher copying speeds could be done on typewriters.  90WPM is not
> unreasonable if copying was done by typewriter.
>
> Mike Lewis
>
>
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