[CW] W6BNB Robert "Bob" L. Shrader, of Sebastopol, California. R/O, Teacher, Author Fire Chief &c.

[David J. J. Ring, Jr.]

Robert L. (Bob) Shrader, W6BNB, author of 10 QST articles, died April 11 
at age 98. He was a long-time resident of Sebastopol, California. His 
most recent QST article was "Using Mechanical CW Keys" in the February 
2010 issue. A prolific author at an age when most settle into 
retirement, he also published articles in Ham Radio and CQ. He was 
inducted into the CQ Amateur Radio Hall of Fame in 2004.

At a young age, he was hired as a shipboard radiotelegraph officer for 
the Dollar Lines, and sailed around the world six times. During his long 
and prolific lifetime, Bob served as a deputy sheriff, radio and 
electronics instructor, and chief of the Freestone (CA) fire department. 
His textbook, Electronic Communications, was published in 1959 by 
McGraw-Hill.

For more information on Bob's fascinating life, see his online reminiscence.

Bob is survived by his wife Dorothy, W6ECU, a son Doug, KJ6TEJ, and 
daughter Patricia.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE CAREER AND REMINISCENCES OF BOB SHRADER - W6BNB
W1TP TELEGRAPH AND SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT MUSEUMS: http://w1tp.com

The following accounts of the use of radios on ships in the early part 
of the 20th century were provided by Bob Shrader - W6BNB...

If you have any questions for him you may contact him by email at 
w6bnb at aol.com <mailto:w6bnb at aol.com>

BOB'S CAREER:

Bob Shrader - W6BNB obtained his amateur radio license while he was in 
high school. In 1932 he went to Central Trade School to obtain his 
commercial telegraph and phone licenses.

In 1933 he went to sea as a radio operator for Dollar Line on round- 
the-world trips (6 times) and then trans-Pacific on other liners (12 
times) then trips to Honolulu on Matsonia and one trip on a freighter to 
Panama and back.

In 1939 he became deputy sheriff for Alameda County at KPDA where worked 
phone, CW and did some patrol work. He was in charge of radio and 
electricity training of deck Cadets at U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at 
Kings Point, L.I. He returned to the sheriff's office in 1945. In 1946 
he took over teaching day and night classes at Central Trade School, 
which later became Laney College.

In 1959 he wrote a text book "Electronic Communication" and other 
electronic and electricity texts for McGraw-Hill. In 1969 he retired and 
moved to Sebastopol with his wife and spent 3 years building a new home. 
He joined the volunteer fire department, ending up as Fire Chief of the 
Freestone Fire Dept. He then went on to Twin Hills FD as Director. He 
wrote "Amateur Radio, Theory and Practice", again for McGraw-Hill, did 
short stints with Hewlett Packard in microwave repair in 1957, and as 
tech writer in 1979. In 1991 he brought out the 6th edition of E.C. And 
most recently, he wrote "Fire Fighting, How It's Done" for Vision Books 
International, which will be published in July 1997.

BOB'S EXPERIENCES AND REMINISCENCES:

Bob first wrote to me to ask me to identify a bug that he had owned for 
many years:

He wrote:
W6BNB - Robert L. ShraderThe old bug in this picture has quite a 
history. It is shown with my Bunnell double-speed key above and my home 
brew sideswiper at the right..

On the first trip I made as rdo op around the world, the chief op got 
tired of my changing his adjustments and suggested I get myself a bug of 
my own. When we reached New York City I spent $ 6 to buy this little bug 
brand new.

The round-the-world trips started in late 1933 and I used it daily until 
1939 at sea, then from '39 to '46 in police radio CW, then from '46 to 
'69 while teaching rdo communications at a trade school/junior college, 
and from '69 to date on the ham bands. In 1937 while on the SS President 
Hoover it was used to send the SOS while the ship was being bombed by 
Chinese airplanes. Really a sweet feeling old friend. Hi.

I am sorry that I can't tell you the address where I purchased the bug. 
All I remember was that it was on the North side of Cortland Street on 
the West side of New York City. It was in December of 1933 during a 
stop-over on my first trip around the world as a Dollar Line radio operator.

We started from San Francisco and went from there to Honolulu, Kobe, 
Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, Penang, Columbo Ceylon, Bombay, 
Suez, Port Said, Alexandria, Naples, Genoa, Marseilles, New York, 
Boston, New York, Havana, Panama Canal, LosAngeles and back home. What a 
trip for a 19 year old kid!

We used 2 kW spark transmitters for the medium frequencies mostly. We 
also had a self-excited push-pull triode 1 kW HF and MF transmitter. We 
used TRF receivers for HF and an IP-501 regenerative detector plus 
2-stage AF receiver for MF and LF. p> In 1937, while on our way to take 
Americans out of Shanghai due to the Sino-Japanese war, the 635-ft 
luxury liner SS President Hoover was at anchor in the Yangtze River, 
waiting for clearance to move into the Woosung River and Shanghai. All 
of a sudden we heard airplanes coming and then the sound of bombs 
dropping in the water and on our top deck.

The skipper turned to me and said, "Well, Sparks, I guess you better 
send an SOS." So I went into the radio room and flipped on the "1 KW" VT 
(Vacuum tube) transmitter set and with my trusty old Logan Speed-x bug 
sent a very fast SOS. Of course we were always told to send a 1- minute 
transmission of 4-sec dashes followed by 1-sec spaces before sending a 
distress call. With the planes still overhead I decided that information 
was for other conditions and I just let go with my bug. I knew that the 
ops at the Shanghai radio stations were very good operators and my 25 or 
so wpm sending would be no problem to them.

We later found out that the planes were Chinese and that they thought we 
were the Asama Maru, a big Japanese ship that was supposed to be in the 
area. How they could miss the 30-foot long American flag laid out on our 
top deck I don't know. But is was something to remember. We were not 
supposed to be at war! One dead and a few injured -- so we were lucky. 
Those Chinese pilots were not too great as they had a sitting duck with 
us at anchor there in the river.

The Dollar Line 2-kW spark transmitters in use at that time had fast 
operating QSK keying relays. The keying circuit only required a fraction 
of an ampere to key the many amperes in the primary of the spark 
transformer. I measured the Leach keying relay coil I have here that was 
used with spark transmitters and it reads 225 ohms, which in series with 
a 250 ohm resistor was used across the regular 110-V dc line aboard most 
ships in those days. The heavy duty keying contacts on the bug easily 
handled that amount of current, about 0.25 amps. We were handling 
traffic at speeds up to at least 30 wpm with no trouble with our spark sets.

In your last communication you suggested that information on old time 
equipment might be of interest. So here is some information about 
transmitters that I know of first hand - and some that predated me but 
that I know about.

TRANSMITTERS:
The first transmitters, around the turn of the century, were open-gap 
spark types. The 500-cps ac was stepped up by a transformer and fed 
across a spark-gap in series with a primary coil which developed 1000- 
cps damped waves that were fed to the antenna. The resonant frequency of 
the antenna did most to determine the transmitting frequency. In the 
teens the gaps were often just open, or rotary types and made a terribly 
loud noise and generated a lot of ozone. In the 20s the gaps were made 
into many very short gaps in series, each being surrounded by copper 
enclosures, with mica insulators between copper holders so that each gap 
unit was not shorted. These were called quenched gaps because the noise 
was quenched, and so was the ozone.

Shipboard spark transmitters were usually built behind vertical bakelite 
panels sitting on top of the operating tables. I remember one ship's 
mate coming into the radio room to shoot the bull with us. He made 
himself very comfortable sitting on the desk top and leaning back 
against the spark transmitter while we talked. His rear end was pushed 
up against the 2-ft wide quenched gaps which stuck out in front of the 
panel. When the ship was called, the operator on watch forgot about the 
mate and switched on the spark transmitter to answer. Boy did that mate 
jump! A 2-kW spark transmitter, which was very loosely coupled to the 
antenna to provide a not-to-wide signal (30 kHz at 100 miles?), could be 
used for trans-Pacific communications with no trouble under reasonable 
conditions. They can operate on all frequencies.

Spark transmitters were no longer used by U.S. ships after WW2, although 
some foreign ships used them for many years after that.

In the teens the arc transmitter was developed. A dc electric arc has 
negative resistance across it. So, if an antenna-to-ground circuit is 
interrupted by putting an electric arc in series with it, the negative 
resistance of the arc makes up for the positive resistance of the 
antenna circuit wire and the radiation losses, so the antenna oscillates 
at its fundamental 1/4-wave frequency. These rigs put out nice clean 
unmodulated CW on lower frequencies. Most of them used back-shunt 
keying, meaning that when the key was down the signal was transmitted by 
the antenna at its resonant frequency. When the key was up the keying 
relay shunted the arc circuit to an LC dummy load tuned to some other 
far removed frequency so the operator could copy the station who was 
answering on the transmitting frequency.

The arc transmitter was going all of the time but only on the desired 
frequency when the key was down. These rigs were very good on higher 
wavelengths but down on the ship calling and distress frequency of 600 
meters (500 kHz to youngsters) they sounded pretty burbly. Because the 
arc worked best in an alcohol or hydrogen atmosphere, when they were 
first struck by their operator, if there happened to any oxygen in the 
sealed arc chamber the result was an explosion and the top would swing 
back on its hinges. This threw out a sooty whiff that would show up as a 
black stripe across the chest of the operators white uniform. They did 
not like that. Arcs were not used at sea after the '30s although 
hundreds-of-kilowatt rigs ashore communicated during WW2 over long 
distances on frequencies lower than 50 kHz.

The only arc transmitter that I used was the one we had set up in our 
radio class room at the old Central Trade School in 1932. We had it explode.

We also gave local commercial stations KPH and KFS some QRM when we 
would key it. But they knew the instructor so did nothing about it.

I have worked other stations on 500 kHz who were using arcs.

There was something else I forgot to tell you about in the way of old 
time tranmitters, the ones that used VTs.

In the late teens vacuum tubes became large enough to be used in 
transmitters. By the mid-'20s an old spark transmitter was converted 
into a "P-8" transmitter. Two push-pull 204A triodes were installed in 
place of the quenched gaps in a self-rectified Colpitts oscillator 
circuit. It put out something over 100 W in the MF range. Later MOPA 
rigs were at sea with a Master Oscillator and a Power Amplifier. Power 
outputs were becoming greater. By the '30s Globe Wireless (not to be 
confused with the present Globe Wireless) had a 2-Gammatron triode 
self-rectified push-pull oscillator tranmitter for both HF and MF 
operations. By use of a Variac on the front panel the power output could 
be adjusted from a watt or two up to 1 kW. Its 500-Hz ac power source 
was doubled to a 1000-Hz output modulated CW, a really nice signal to 
copy. Also, it was over 100% modulated so it was pretty broad. This was 
advantageous because the receivers at that time drifted badly as did the 
transmitter. By this time LF operations had dropped off to almost nil at 
sea.

RECEIVERS:
Original receivers at sea were either solid-state crystals or other 
simple diode type rectifiers. They could only be used to pick up 
modulated signals so they were usable with spark signals and MCW 
transmissions. In fact up to this date SOS and other emergency sets are 
supposed to use MCW to assure the signals are audible on any kind of 
receiver, should they be tuned to zero-beat with the transmitter.

In the teens triode oscillators were beginning to be used as the 
detectors. Besides operating as a diode in the grid circuit they also 
provided amplification in the plate circuits. This was the well known 
"regenerative detector" system. In oscillation it would beat against 
incoming signals providing a beat-tone to be heard in the earphones. 
With a 2-stage amplifier it could provide enough amplification for 
loudspeaker operation.

Being an oscillator and coupled to an antenna it also radiated a 
constant CW signal that could be heard for several miles. At sea all 
operators monitored the distress frequency of 500 kHz constantly. As 
result, any time a ship would pass by within a few miles its weak 
whistle signal would be heard. Once when sending in an arrival message 
to the coastal station at Colombo, Ceylon I keyed my receiver to send 
the message. The operator at the dock station would not believe me. When 
I turned on my 2-kW spark set and repeated the message he believed me! 
His ears must still be ringing. During WW2 the German subs would monitor 
500 kHz and when they heard the weak whistles they would find the ship 
and sink it. With an RF amplifier in front of the detector this was not 
a problem. That was the demise of the regenerative detector at sea. In 
the mid-'30s superhets began to find their way into ship communications.

73 W6BNB Bob

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob started a sideswiper net on 80M in California, it was still going on 
in the 1980s when I came across it. I joined in when sailing upstream 
along the California coast headed for Alaska. I checked in using a 
Vibroplex, and I probably mistakenly thought they were irritated that I 
did so, but in reality, no one cared, they were just delighted that I 
checked in, cootie senders are like that I found out, but I had a chance 
to listen to some awesome cootie operators (all of whom I've forgotten 
names, calls, except Bob who was legendary and very generous with his 
time. He wrote "Electronic Communication" which was the bible especially 
for those taking the Telegraph FCC element 5 (telegraph procedure) and 6 
(radiotelegraph circuits and theory), in fact his edition 1 and 2 
carried information about Spark and Arc - both of which Bob had learned 
on and used on his trips with Dollar Line - which was the predecessor of 
American President Line.

 From 
https://www.gjenvick.com/OceanTravel/SteamshipLines/DollarSteamshipLine.html

Dollar Line continued expanding its business in the late 1920s, buying 
five more "535 President Type" ships in 1926. In that year, Dollar Line 
carried over 45,000 passengers and had gross revenue of $6 million. 
Dollar encouraged others to invest in Asia with his booklet, "Have You 
Investigated the Oriental Market for Your Product?", helping to open up 
Asia to 20th-century industry. The Merchant Marine Act of 1928 (also 
known as the JonesâWhite act) also helped Dollar Line, allowing it to 
sign a lucrative new mail contract and requiring it to build new ships 
to meet demand.

On May 16, 1932, Robert Dollar died at the age of 88 and was succeeded 
by his son, Robert Stanley Dollar. Following Robert senior's death, the 
company began a steady decline. In 1938. American Mail Line became 
American President Lines.

We used to have a brief history of Bob's old sideswiper net but it's 
gone missing from the web updates.

Bob was also active in the Society of Wireless Pioneers 
"Intercontinental" net which was run by Hank W1HRQ who had Âtwo 120 foot 
towers and strung 130 feet of wire between them. He showed me what a 
great signal can be had if you just spend the attention and money on a 
dipole like you usually do when you put up a beam. How true.

Hank W1HRQ taught electronics for RCA and he was outstanding say the 
many R/O's who took his class, no elitism of "the educated" was his, 
which is fabulous and a wonderful refreshment from the constant elitism 
we find today where people who didn't pursue degrees are marginalized. 
Hank sent with a Yaesu FT-101 and he inserted a 1 mfd capacitor across 
the keyline to give the transmissions a wonderful bell shaped tone like 
the old KFS (ITT Mackay San Francisco) transmitters on 22515 and 17026 
kHz - the transmitters are the old "Globe Wireless / Press Wireless 
Transmitters used at the South of San Francisco harbor site near Palo 
Alto, CA, receiver site at Half Moon Bay.

Bob was well educated but by the Trade Schools, I don't know about Hank 
but they both were experts and they knew what they were talking about, 
not just "about" something. That was my reaction when I saw Bob's book 
at the Harvard Coop Book Store in 1977, it was over my budget - probably 
nearly $40.00 but I knew he knew what he was talking about, it reeked of 
"real knowledge" so I bought it and I never regretted doing so, in fact 
I bought his 2nd edition just to read what he said about Spark and Arc.

Some more info on Palo Alto KFS that had that beautiful bell shaped tone 
that is preserved at several of the KPH/KFS transmitters now in use 
(except QRT for the duration of the Pandemic.)

Voice of America: Palo Alto in California
A Story of an International Shortwave Broadcasting Station in California 
That Was on the Air During the Intense Days of the Decisive Pacific War
by Adrian M. Peterson,3/01/2007

Dr. Adrian M. Peterson is a board member of the National Association of 
Shortwave Broadcasters. He was born in South Australia in 1931; since 
1944 he has since written several thousand articles on radio history, 
which have been published in 25 languages. He is advisor to the program 
âWavescanâ and coordinator of international relations for Adventist 
World Radio. He wrote âThe 'Isle of Dreams' Goes Shortwaveâ here last fall.

This is the second in an occasional series on the stories behind 
shortwave broadcasting stations in the United States and its 
territories; it is published in cooperation with the National 
Association of Shortwave Broadcasters. Some stations are gone and almost 
forgotten, others can be heard today.

W6BNB - Robert L. ShraderKROJ QSL card, VOA-OWI
That is the story of an important international shortwave station that 
was on the air during the intense days of the decisive Pacific War. 
Programming from this station was beamed south to the Pacific and north 
to Alaska and it was made up of relays from OWI-VOA and also AFRS.

We take a look at the known information, admittedly a little sketchy, 
about this significant shortwave relay station, and we begin way back 
nearly 100 years ago.

Federal Telegraph
There was a maritime wireless station established on Ocean Beach in San 
Francisco near what became the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge 
back in the year 1910. During the American involvement in World War I, 
this Morse Code wireless station was taken over by the Navy for naval 
communication, and in 1921, it was handed back to Federal Telegraph.

During the following year, another maritime station with updated 
electronic equipment was erected further south at a new location in the 
marshy areas of the inner harbor at Palo Alto. At the time, both of 
these stations were owned by the Federal Telegraph Company, which also 
owned a wireless equipment factory in the Palo Alto area, and both 
stations identified on the air in Morse Code as KFS. Over a period of 
six years, the maritime wireless communication service from the older 
Ocean Beach station was fully phased out in favor of the newer Palo Alto 
station.

Soon afterwards, the communication radio station at Palo Alto was sold 
to the Mackay Wireless & Cable Company, though the station still 
identified on air as KFS. That was its main call sign, and back in those 
days, every new channel in the shortwave spectrum was officially 
allocated a new three letter call sign. In the mid 1930s, most of the 
channel call signs from Palo Alto Radio were in the KW series, such as 
KWA, KWB, KWC, etc.

Immediately after Pearl Harbor, rapid moves were made in the United 
States to increase the number of shortwave transmitters on the air with 
international radio programming from a dozen up to about three dozen. In 
fact, on the West Coast at that time, there was only one regular station 
on the air with international shortwave programming; that was station 
KGEI, at Belmont, also south of San Francisco. It is true, special 
programs were broadcast from some of the communication transmitters 
operated by RCA (Radio Corporation of America) at Bolinas, but the 
scheduling was only occasional and spasmodic.

Quite quickly, additional shortwave transmitters were installed at 
various locations in California and brought into service as soon as 
possible to give international coverage into the Pacific and Asia, as 
well as to Australia and New Zealand.

Among these new stations back in the early days of the Pacific War were 
KWID and KWIX at Islais Creek, KRCA and KRCQ at Bolinas, and an 
additional unit at Belmont, KGEX. In addition, two new broadcasting 
units were made available at KFS, the Mackay maritime station at Palo 
Alto, and these identified on air with the four letter broadcast call 
signs, KROJ and KROU. A third unit, KROZ, was quickly commandeered for 
the surrender broadcasts in August 1945.

KROJ
The first of these new transmitters at Palo Alto was KROJ, and according 
to published information at the time, the transmitter was a 50 kW Press 
Wireless unit, manufactured in the United States, sent to England, and 
re-imported back into the United States.

However, another report states that the new KROJ was in reality an RCA 
unit, already available, that was quickly installed at Palo Alto and 
pressed into service. Notwithstanding these published reports, 
experienced radio personnel in the San Francisco area state that they 
consider the new shortwave service was transmitted from communication 
units already on the air at the Palo Alto station, and perhaps modified 
for broadcast usage.

Experienced international radio monitors in Australia and New Zealand 
who tuned in daily to the many shortwave stations in California during 
the Pacific War noted the strong signals from station KROJ and estimated 
the power output to be at 50 kW. The signal strength surely indicated 
that the power output of this strong new station could not be less than 
20 kW, and certainly not at 100 kW.

Without ceremony or prior publicity, transmitter KROJ suddenly appeared 
on the shortwave bands with a relay of programming from VOA, the Voice 
of America and AFRS, the Armed Forces Radio Service. The first known 
monitoring of this new unit was in Australia in June 1943.

Just prior to Pearl Harbor, OWI, the Office of War Information in 
Washington, established a branch office in San Francisco. The location 
was 111 Sutter Street, the well known home for NBC around that era. West 
Coast programming for the VOA-OWI transmitters was produced in the 
Sutter Street studios, and also in studios established in two hotels on 
Nob Hill, Fairmont and Mark Hopkins.

The OWI-VOA office in Sutter Street sent me a copy of their official 
schedule for the California stations, effective Aug. 1, 1945, just a few 
days before the surrender broadcasts. This schedule included the 
programming from all of the California shortwave stations that were 
active in the VOA network at the time. These stations were KROJ and 
KROU, as well as KGEI and KGEX, KWID and KWIX, KCBA and KCBF, and 
KNBA/KNBI/KNBX, as well as the new Hawaiian station KRHO. (Over a period 
of time, we hope to look here at the history of all of the shortwave 
stations in the United States, including the California stations.)

This VOA schedule shows such familiar programs from the wartime era as 
"World News," "Concert Hall," "Our Marine Corp," "G.I. Jive" and "Hymns 
from Home". Commentaries from major sporting events were also included 
in their regular programming. This schedule shows only the English 
language programming, and none of the programming on the air in the 
foreign languages of Asia and the Pacific.

It is probable that the broadcast call signs for the relay transmitters 
at Palo Alto were derived from KRO. The call sign KRO had been in use 
previously with the RCA shortwave communication station at Kahuku on the 
island of Oahu, Hawaii and it was recycled into use at Palo Alto in 
early 1943. Hence, from communication KRO was derived the broadcast call 
signs KROJ, KROU and KROZ.

Footprint
The intended coverage areas for the transmissions from KROJ were the 
South Pacific, coastal Asia, New Guinea, Alaska and the Aleutians. 
Shortwave frequencies were chosen accordingly, to ensure propagation at 
the required distance and at the time of day in the reception areas.

The signal strength in the target areas was usually very good. In fact, 
an army officer serving in North Borneo stated on one occasion, as 
reported in a radio magazine in Australia, that he was hearing the 
broadcasts from KROJ via a local medium-wave (AM) station. It is 
probable that this off-air relay from KROJ in San Francisco was heard 
from an AM medium-wave station located on Labuan Island, North Borneo, 
that had been captured from the Japanese just a few days earlier.

A sister transmitter, KROU, suddenly appeared on the radio dial in April 
1945, equally unheralded and unpublicized. Programming for this unit was 
also drawn from VOA and AFRS sources and beamed to similar areas as 
KROJ, north to Alaska and south to the Pacific. The planned scheduling 
for these two transmitters was announced ahead of time on air, and in 
radio magazines in the United States and Australia, and it was also sent 
to listeners in duplicated form.

At the time of the surrender broadcasts from Tokyo Bay in 1945, another 
Palo Alto transmitter suddenly joined the network, and this was 
identified as KROZ. This unit was already in service with communication 
traffic across the Pacific, it was stated, and because of the sudden 
requirements at the end of the Pacific War, apparently it was hurriedly 
given another broadcast call sign in the Palo Alto sequence and brought 
into service. Maybe this call sign with its very brief usage was even 
unofficial. Who knows?

Programming from KROZ was in parallel with KROJ. Station KROZ was on the 
air for a few days only, and at the most, just a week or two.

The last known program broadcasts from KROJ and KROU took place around 
November or December 1945. The war was over, and the two new and very 
large stations, VOA Delano and VOA Dixon, both in California, were 
already being phased into service. The temporary units at Palo Alto were 
no longer needed for broadcast service, and we would guess that they 
were quietly taken back into the regular communication service from 
Radio Palo Alto, station KFS.

The total time of on-air service from KROJ/KROU/KROZ was less than 1-1/2 
years, and they vanished as they began, unheralded and unannounced.

NØUF has this on his website which I believe is part of what used to be 
posted on our website. He quotes "World Radio" June 1988.

June, 1988 Worldradio page 62
Sideswiper Net by Bob Shrader, W6BNB

The Society of Amateur Radio Operators (SARO), formed in 1937 in the San 
Francisco Bay Area, has recently reached back into the far distant past 
to come up with a "Sideswiper Net."

Old-timers may know what a sideswiper is, but for the younger members of 
the fraternity, it is a key that operates somewhat like a bug or an 
electronic keyer. On such keys - as you probably know - a push of the 
thumb produces a series of dots, and a push of the first finger produces 
a dash on a bug, or a series of dashes with an electronic keyer. But the 
sideswiper, or "cootie" key, makes a dash with either the thumb or first 
finger.

To make a dot, you just tap either side of the paddle(s) lightly. To 
make two dots, you tap first the left side and then the right side. To 
make an "S" you tap left-right-left, or you may make it by tapping 
right-left-right, and so on. For a "K" you can make a dash with the 
finger, a dot with the thumb, and the second dash with the finger; or 
again, you can reverse it and make a dash with the thumb, dot with the 
finger and dash with the thumb.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well it isn't. If you don't believe me, try it.

To try to send with a cootie key, you can use one of several types of 
keys. One of the easiest is to use an electronic key paddle that has a 
center lead and two outside leads (to the right and left contacts). By 
tying these two outside leads together, the center and outside leads 
make up a cootie key circuit. Or you can homebrew a short piece of 
hacksaw blade held at one end above a base board, that can be pushed 
against a contact to the right or against a contact to the left.

You can fashion your own paddle out of a piece of 1/8" 3-ply and glue or 
bolt it to the end of the hacksaw blade. You can also bolt two hand keys 
together, base-to-base, and fix them so the bases are at 90º from a 
wooden - or better yet, a heavy metal - base.

By far the simplest cootie key is made by tying the end of the vibrating 
end of a bug to its backstop with a rubber band so that the rod cannot 
move off of the backstop. Then with the thumb pushed to its stop, adjust 
the dot contact until it makes a solid electrical connection - and you 
have an excellent working sideswiper.

These keys were used 100 years ago by telegraphers, and later by the 
early-day radio operators. Around the '30s they began to disappear, and 
it is unusual to hear an old-timer pounding brass on a sidewinder any 
more. Once in a while you will hear one, probably on 40 or 80 M. They 
have a distinctive sound because it is extremely hard to make similar 
dots with both thumb and first finger, or similar dashes with thumb and 
finger. In most cases, a computer will not copy transmissions made by 
cootie key because of the "swing" of the sending. It tends to separate 
the men from the boys as operators. You usually can't cheat by copying 
cootie key operators with a computer; you have to be able to read the 
stuff by ear.

Actually, it requires many hours of practice on THE QUICK BROWN FOX 
JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOGS BACK 1234567890.?, BT AR AS and SK before an 
operator dares to put his sending on the air. However, if you are one 
who enjoys a challenge, you will find your match in a sideswiper.

The SARO Sideswiper Net is on 3668.5 kHz at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on 
Tuesday mornings if you are interested and live in the central 
California area. If out of the area, you might try setting up a net of 
your own, if you can find any people crazy enough to check in with you.

It is a little painful to transmit with these keys. It is surprising how 
hard it is for an old-time bug or electronic key operator to train the 
part of his brain that the cootie key operates from. That old thumb just 
won't make dashes correctly!

I thought some would enjoy a bit of history. Nice memories from our 
departed cootie pioneers!

73
DR Dave Ring N1EA

W6BNB - Robert L. Shrader

W6BNB - Robert L. Shrader

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