[CW] Difference between Amateur and Commercial Morse Exams

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

What a mistake elimination the Morse sending test was, and changing the
Morse receiving test to the equivalent of the watered down Amateur Extra
code multiple choice test from the ITU international treaty requirement
which was "sending and receiving at least one continuous minute without
error, English at 20 words per minute and five (5) letter cipher groups at
16 groups per minute.



After this was changed we had radio officers on ships who COULD NOT copy
SOS calls sent out on 500 kHz by ships in distress.


I communicated with one such Radio Officer who requested a relay of his
daily messages to the Company because both Slidell Radio WNU and Mobile,
Alabama Radio WLO couldn't copy him. I soon found out it wasn't a matter of
signal strength but it was the incomprehensible was he was sending. He was
sending like a typical ham operator - extra dots and dashes and no spaces.
It was a true nightmare to copy him. I finally told him QSD QRK NIL and
shut my station down for the night.



Applicants for the Radiotelegraph license were previously failed if they
couldn't send well. People's lives depended on their radio officer's
ability to send and receive Morse.



When I first operated from a ship, I was on as second operator on TT
WILLIAMSBURGH/WGOA and I called Galveston Radio/KLC on 500 kHz, he answered
and told me to shift to my working frequency of 468 kHz and he'd respond on
his working frequency of 484 kHz. KLC KLC DE WGOA WGOA QTC5 K // WGOA DE
KLC QRV K.  And confidently - even though this was my first commercial CW
QSO - I started sending my messages and KLC kept interrupting me asking for
repeats of what I had sent.



At the time I had been an Amateur Extra licensee for seventeen years and I
was a proud member of the First-class CW Operator's club and was well
regarded as an excellent operator.  An excellent Amateur Radio operator
perhaps but not even a competent commercial Radiotelegraph operator. I was
running all my words and letters together.



I finished my first radiogram and expected KLC to QSL my message but he
didn't respond!


The chief operator of WGOA told me KLC had dumped me because of my poor
spacing. He told me I sounded like an amateur, that my sending was
undecipherable. I licked my wounds, secured the starion, turned on the auto
alarm receiver, and went to lunch as it was 1200. I returned at 1500 for
the afternoon watch, called GALVESTON RADIO KLC shifted up to 468/484 and
sent my five messages, this time giving double the space between words
(before my spaces were slightly longer than the spacing between letters.



I was humbled but I became a better operator because of it.


73
David N1EA

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