[CW] Amazing Story about Morse Op

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

Hijacked shamelessly from FISTSCW @ yahoogroups reflector

Sorry to hi-jack this subject a bit but it reminded me of a member of
our local club who was taught by our members to pass the (then) RAE.
He was severely disabled including being profoundly deaf and unable to
speak. It was discovered that he could discern vibrations via bone
conduction, he learnt morse code and communicated using that. He had a
computer which translated the morse which he sent with an iambic
paddle for those who did not copy morse. His name was Mark Brownfield
and his callsign was G0EMZ. He was wheelchair bound and unfortunately
he died very young. I have the obituary from the local newspaper which
tells much of his story. I also have an excellent photograph of Mark
operating his paddle.  Mark used a Ten-Tec Century to a KW trapped
dipole plus a vertical for 10 metres with radials all assembled by
West Kent ARS - he lived in the local Cheshire Home. He was a member
of WKARS, RSGB and RAIBC. He studied for the RAE  using morse code
only. He sat and passed both parts of the exam at the first attempt
also using morse code, possibly the only person ever do that. I worked
him on numerous occasions on the WKARS CW net which was a regular
Sunday morning activity on 10 metres. Although severely physically
disabled there was nothing wrong with his brain and he was able to
fully participate in the nets.

73 de Dave G4OTV