[CW] Dit-Dit and old recordings

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

DE WB2UZE

Something interesting to mention to the LICW Club.  So, some know I wrote a
book about the history of radio communications at the Fire Island
Lighthouse here on Long Island.  It's an interesting story and what led me
to do that started with my visit to K6KPH out in California some years
back. Snippets of my research/photos can be found on the QRZ page of W2NMY,
a memorial call sign we established.  With all the research done on this
subject, I had never come across any recordings of NMY nor frankly even
thought about such a possibility.  Member David N1EA has made a tremendous
effort archiving maritime ship to shore recordings on the internet and we
use his recordings in our Head Copy class for training.  I asked David the
other day if he had any recordings of NMY and he sent me this link:

https://archive.org/details/WilliamB.GouldIiiWirelessRadioPioneer.His500KhzRecordingsOfMarch

If you listen to the recording (to the right of the photograph) labeled 3
 02  11 Mar 1966 at minute 27.51 you will hear this message:  T T T  CQ DE
NMY CG Marine Info Bcst QSW 486 kcs.  Also at minute 6.44-7.2 you can hear
NMY, using a classic straight key fist, reply to HOKP.  Hearing this blew
me away and where can find such a prize?

Another coincidence...some of you might have met member Tom Hahn who is not
yet licensed but comes to classes.  Tom worked at NMY as Coast Guard tech
and helped me immensely collaborating on the book.  Tom was stationed at
NMY at the Fire Island Lighthouse at the same time span as this very
transmission so who knows, he could have been right there next to the
transmitters when it was sent.  The giant RCA transmitters were keyed from
30 miles away by telephone connection and part of Tom's job was to maintain
that connection.
This is an email from Howard WB2UZE to the Long Island CW Club that
mentions one of the recordings of K2LP that John Dilks k2TQN gave to me to
digitize.


I know this email will have limited appeal but I still wanted to share it
anyway especially for those that have my book.  Hearing these recordings
last night meant something special to me

Regards
Howard
WB2UZE

DE N1EA =

While I was listening to the recording, I heard something that had come up
in conversation with some of the email lists, some think the current use of
"dit-dit" comes from the Novice (meaning new operators) using "shave and a
hair cut, two bits" - in Morse E S E  with a response of EE.

I told them it had an earlier usage in commercial radiotelegraphy and it
was in active use by amateur radio operators who were former commercial
operators, and who were active in amateur radio, many of our clubs were
founded by former commercial operators, OOTC comes to mind, SOWP and the
others have probably a majority of members who are ex Navy, Army, land, sea
and air civilian Morse operators.

I came across this recording made by Bill Gould,  K2NP in 1962 of 500 kc/s
(kHz) from Belmar, NJ - not far from RCA's WSC Tuckerton Radio.

It's at 14:51 minutes into this recording.
https://archive.org/download/WilliamB.GouldIiiWirelessRadioPioneer.His500KhzRecordingsOfMarch/03_11mar1966_2048-2155_EST_k2np.mp3

I attach the section of interest.  In it you will hear what is probably a
German Passenger ship,   WSC WSC WSC (Tuckerton, NJ Radio) DE DDQH DDQH UP
468 (ship traffic frequency).  Unless you know commercial procedures - and
yes, they involve dit and dit-dit, you might miss WSC's response.  It's a
single dit which means (I understand, lets go), and DDQH's response which
is a double dit.  (Usually it's the other way around, but WSC knew a single
dit would probably get lost in the constant QRM of 500 kHz, so he answered
with two dits.

73
DR
N1EA
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