[CW] Maritime keys used

[David Ring]

The majority of ship operators used the station's straight key.  It was a
matter of policy for many years in the UK Post Office (which ran the coastal
radio telegraph stations) that ONLY a straight key be used, however this was
relaxed in the 1970s and afterwards.

Some stations like Mobile (Alabama) Radio / WLO mandated ONLY Morse
keyboards!  At stations like TRT's Slidell Radio / WNU, most of the
operators used keyers or keyboards, while at RCA's stations - Chatham
(Massachusetts) Radio /WCC, Baltimore (Maryland) Radio / WMH, Lantana
(Florida) Radio WOE, and San Francisco Radio / KPH used bugs.  ITT's
stations like Amagansett (New York) WSL, and San Francisco / KFS were fifty
fifty bugs and keyers.  It seemed that the independants Galveston (Texas)
KLC, Tuckerton (NJ) Radio / WSC and Seattle Radio / KLB were more bugs than
keyers.  Up in Alaska, Alascom's stations WKN, Ketchikan, Alaska, Lena
Point, Alaska WLQ and WKR Nome, Alaska seemed to be mostly straight key or
bugs.

Out of the way places like St. Pierre Radio / TXU - France's last settlement
in North America - were straight keys and in my opinion the operators there
and elsewhere in the remote areas lamented loosing their spark transmitters
and still wished to send as nasty as possible.

On ships the USA merchant marine used mostly hand keys unless the ship had a
lot of traffic - in which case the radio officer would either bring his own
bug or keyer.  The problem with a keyer is that you'd have to modify the
output keying stage as the current that we'd key would be around 300 ma at
130 volts on the main medium frequency transmitter.  The latest HF units
which used solid state could be safely keyed with a stock keyer, but I
modified my keyer with either a Radio Shack 5 vdc small relay or a CP Clair
mercury wetted relay.  I also modified my Morse keyboard with this relay so
I could use a 'board on 500 kHz and drive the Russians - who almost
exclusively used keyboards - often at 50 wpm and higher - nuts!

It was a pleasure sending long messages - say 800 words or so - with a
keyboard - the receiving coast station operators liked to copy such great
code.

73

David N1EA



On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Bill Clarke <w2blc at necoastal.net> wrote:

> My ignorance will show with this question: Did most maritime ops use
> straight keys - or did they use bugs?
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