[CW] Fast Morse Hand Sending

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

Years ago I found some fast hand sending it must have been recorded
around 1919 because III was used as period.   Head of Press Wireless,
Don DeNeuf, WA1SPM wrote about a Japanese station not knowing what III
meant as in NIIIYIII for N.Y. or was it NIII YIII for N. Y. - I don't
know.

Does anyone have any info on these two recordings? Also a guess at to
the speed?

http://qsl.net/n1ea/fast_hand_key1.mp3
http://qsl.net/n1ea/fast_hand_key2.mp3

Some info on WA1SPM is here:  http://www.n7cfo.com/tgph/Dwnlds/MM/MMs/MM05.pdf
Press Wireless § memories 9 3 by Don deNeuf, WA1SPN.

"Press Wireless was an intriguing institution franchised by the
pre-FCC Federal Radio Commission back in 1929 as an h.f.
point-to—point communications outfit assembled by several large
newspapers and press services for worldwide news exchange. Much of
PW's commercial Dx talent came up through the ham ranks. By 1944 the
system was handling a hundred million words of press per year between
enough countries to make instantaneous DXCC. They pioneered in photo
transmission, multiplex, RTTY and other information—moving h.f. radio
techniques. PW participated in some fantastic field days too. As D.K.
deNeuf recalls in a recent issue of Horse Telegraph Club's "Dots and
Dashes", teams of Press Wireless ops and techs scrambled ashore with
Eisenhower and MacArthur at Normandy and Leyte in WW2 to keep the
world informed of invasion progress. The PW crew en route to Berlin
made two dozen set—up stops, stretched 26,000 feet of antenna wire and
operated 8,600 hours to handle eight million words of press and
hundreds of network voice newscasts. Another wartime PW legend is the
tale of YTG. That cell's prefix represented Yugoslavia then as now.
After the Nazi invasion of '41, many Yugoslav troops continued
resistance in the mountains. A squad of Yank radiomen was parachuted
to hard-pressed units commanded by ill- fated General Draja
Hikhailovich. They succeeded in keep— ing the outside world aware of
battle action via hit—run c.w. skeds with Press Wireless DX hounds at
WPK on Long Island." (from "How's DX" by Rod Newkirk, W9BRD, in QST,
March 1977)

By chance I happened to run across the above. It struck me as being a
sort of, shall we say, a milepost sign in the skyrocketing advances of
international telecoms over the past few years. A decade has gone by
since Rod wrote this about "Old PW". And some forty years has passed
since the events he mentions took place.

He was explaining the purpose of the colossal shortwave layouts PW and
others had. Today virtually all of them (RCAC, Pw, Mackay, AT&T,
Tropical) have been abandoned
in favour of satellite circuits and underseas coaxial cables. (I don't
know much about the military today).
I remember W.A. ("Frosty") Winterbottom, Pres. of RCAC shortly before
WW2 testifying before the FCC on something or other. He was asked by a
Commissioner (FCC) if he could ”place a value in dollars” on a
frequency (h.f.) assigned to RCAC. "Yes", he said after a few
moments of thought, "Yes, I‘d say about one million dollars". H.F. was
all RCAC had - it was their life blood. Coaxial cables and satellites
were many years away.

I wonder if the stimulation, fascination, mysteries and challenges of
those days of d.c. submarine cables and h.f. radio competition exists
in the telecom technology of today?* But I suppose that when we
consider h.f. ZFO's, Dellinger curtains, ZFB's, ZSU's, ZWT‘s, ZAN's,
submarine
d.c. cable breaks, earth currents, unbalances, etc, things today are
more reliable with fewer headaches than they used to be. I guess. But
the excitement of...."we've
got him!".... "he's coming thru now"...."AL balance OK now — GA
tfc".... "tell him to ZSF to 200 wpm now" still sparkles in fading
memories of an old communicator.
So mote it be. Alas — or rather joy, oh joy. I guess.

73, Don deNeuf. WA1SPM.

*Cable salesman‘s pitch: "Oh you know how these radio circuits are -
the weather changes and Wham! they are "out" for hours on end ".

Radio salesman's pitch: "Well those cables are fine when they work,
but along comes an earthquake or some ship's anchor and BUST goes the
cable - out for weeks
at a time! Play safe - use radio".

Both: You ought to use radiograms or cablegrams, not the telephone....
you know speech is so often hard to understand, and so often phonetic
errors take place which
can be a disaster!"

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73

DR