[CW] Suez canal

[N7DC]

That was one of the nets that I occasionally ran across in my "general 
search" position when in the intercept service.  It was fun copying 
those guys, and  I could keep up for half an hour or so if they were 
constantly sending, but after that, my mind just kinda went away.  The 
UN police operators that were in and out of the Belgian Congo at the 
time were also very very fast ops.  Another guy and I would switch off 
every half hour or so, just to keep us fresh copying them.  Remember we 
had to copy both sides of the conversations, 100 percent typed copy, 
which was hard, especially with others calling in on top of them, and 
regular propagation of QSB, QRN, QRM etc.  We often found them sending 
in the 45-50 wpm range.

   There was  nearby country which was constantly at war, which had some 
of the rottenest operators going.  Trying to copy them was a "choice".  
Often, there would be 4 or 5 out of 6 or 7 stations, all sending at the 
same time, back and forth, with short 1 -2 page messages.  I just had to 
pick out one of the signals at a time, and stay with it - thus the 
"choice".  Luckily, several of the transmitters had easily identified 
sounds and you could tell the callsign just from hearing the signals.  
It was good practice for pileups in my ham life.


-- 
Danny Douglas
N7DC