[CW] KLB in Seattle

[Richard Knoppow]

    Thank you. I heard all of these except the ones in Alaska for 
some reason. I thought KLB might have been MacKay but never saw 
any listing of its owner. It would be lovely to find some copies 
of the ITU Bern Bureau books for a few years. I have one from the 
early 1960s which is the list of ship stations. I've seen a few 
others on Amazon or ABE but at very inflated prices. I am 
surprised they are so hard to find, but like old telephone books, 
they were probably discarded when outdated.
     There are a few listings in the old Federal Radio Commission 
bulletins, which are available on the web, but those were 
discontinued around 1931 and only a few contain lists of coastal 
stations or ships. Somewhere I found an entry for WLO showing it 
to belong to Mobile Marine Radio, can't remember the date. 
Evidently it was later part of Globe Wireless.
     While I began listening to and copying marine stations in 
about 1960 I did not have any definite information on how exactly 
they worked. That has been filled in fairly recently mostly 
because I asked some pretty dumb questions on this list. I still 
find it fascinating that what was a fairly large and very 
important business was run for decades on rather simple (almost 
crude) technology on the basis of human intelligence. Anyone who 
remembers telephones when we still had operators knows what I 
mean. No automated voice mail thing can come within a million 
miles of the "voice with a smile".
     Thank you all so much.

On 2/14/2019 8:07 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
> Danny,
> 
> Don't be hard on yourself.  He did mention "coast stations" but 
> if you weren't a salty type of radio person, you might not know 
> he meant maritime coast stations with radiotelegraphy Morse code.
> 
> KLB was run initially by ITT/Mackay Marine, I don't know what 
> year it came into existance.  It was near Seattle, Washington.  
> KLC was also ITT/Mackay Marine and it was near Galveston, Texas.  
> I know that by the middle 1990s both stations were owned by 
> private individuals, with only KFS San Francisco being part of 
> ITT/Mackay as far as I know.  KFS still exists but it went 
> through a ping pong ball game of ownership changes near 1999.  It 
> is currently owned by Globe Wireless or was recently.
> 
> The coast stations on the West Coast excepting USCG stations were 
> since 1980, KOK Los Angeles (ITT/Mackay,) KFS on the south lip of 
> SFO Bay (ITT/Mackay,) KPH on the north lip of SFO Bay, (RCA, 
> later MCI.) and KLB Seattle (ITT/Mackay,) then WLQ Lena Point, 
> Alaska, WKM Ketchikan, Alaska, and WKR Nome, Alaska formerly RCA 
> then Alaskcom. WBL was in Buffalo, NY which had CW, and that's 
> about it, except for the East and Gulf Coasts.  East:  WCC, WSL, 
> WKM (West Haven, CT), WAX Ojus, FL (TRT), WOE Lantana, FL (near 
> Miami) WPD Tampa, WLO Mobile, Alabama, WNU Slidell, Louisiana, 
> (TRT), WPA Port Arthur, TX (RCA), and KLC Galveston (ITT/Mackay,) 
> later privately owned.
> 
> 73
> David N1EA
> 
> 
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 10:43 PM <n7dc at comcast.net 
> <mailto:n7dc at comcast.net>> wrote:
> 
>     I hate this computer, just dropping me out of email while I
>     am still typing.
> 
>     Yeah, I apparently missed the first of the conversation. But
>     it may be interesting to some anyway. Wondered why it was on
>     the cw reflector. HI. I had heard some of the costal stations
>     in my early years as a listener, but wasn't much interested
>     in them, as far as reporting etc. Some of the listeners did
>     copy them and try to get confirmations, and we had some books
>     that showed addresses, etc.  The ISWL club is still around,
>     and you might find some old books or even some reprints
>     someplace, from them.  I havent looked, in 20 years.   Do
>     know they have web pages now.  We used to call the
>     non-government/non-ham stations "UTILITIES".  Some of them
>     just appeared to sit around and send either their calls, or
>     some list or the other.  Some were also the 4 or 5
>     letter/number code groups, and we always figured were spy
>     stations, and even had a few guys specializing in those,
>     trying to ID.  HI.


-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL