[CW] Fast Hand Key Sending !!!

[David Ring]

Here is some fun.

On this page there are several old recordings made by W1DM, Arthur
Goodnow who was a Radio Officer, then later ascended to be the head of
Westinghouse Radio Engineering Department.  I last spoke to him in
1988 when he was visiting WBZ in Boston.  As always he was a great
man.

Here is the page:
http://www.n1ea.coastalradio.org.uk/

Here is the recordings that I especially drawing attention to:

The 1974 EU recording by W1DM.
The 1960s-70s recording called "Channel Tea Party" submitted by VA3CH
- R/O Charles Henry.

Especially in the 1974 EU recording - PCH must be sending nearly 28
wpm on a hand key.

The call signs are easy to recognize:  Look at the ITU prefixes.
VON is Canada, EJK is Ireland, FFB is France, TAH is Turkey, IAR is
Italy, CUL is Lisbon, GNI is England, EAP is Spain, etc.
Some of these are very weak.  WSC is in Tuckerton, NJ - good DX - all
the way across the pond!

OST is Belgium, DAN is Germany, PCH (with nice mcw) is Holland, CUG
however is in the Azores - but it still has a Portugal callsign!

The last voyage of the "Queen Mary/GBTT" is also very interesting.  By
the way, Queen Mary is now a Long Beach, CA hotel and the callsign was
reassigned to the Queen Elizabeth 2 - the Brits often used double last
letters for the pasenger liners (GBSS was another passenger ship...)
K, W and N are USA stations and ships.  WCC was in Chatham, MA, WNY
and WSF were in New York Harbor, WSL was on Long Island, WSC in New
Jersey.  WOO was 'phone only - and was near WSC in New Jersey - owned
and run by AT&T.  AT&T charged $15.90 for three minutes of SSB to USA
telephones.  The CW stations charged about 46 cents per word (up to
ten letters) - no extra charge for ciphers - Western Union charges for
International delivery would sometimes be over a dollar a word.  In
the USA Western Union charged 7-1/2 cents a word - so those overseas
cables were very expensive at that time as were overseas telephone
cables.

73

David N1EA

=30=