[Elecraft] QRP on the High Seas...

Sat Feb 22 02:10:01 2003

That is quite a story Ron.  Very interesting.

Bruce - W8FU

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ron D'Eau Claire
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 1:01 PM
To: 'Elecraft'
Subject: [Elecraft] QRP on the High Seas...

Working on ships in port, I met a lot of radio operators and heard a lot
of stories. 

One Sparky told me about the night they steamed around in circles in the
middle of the Pacific looking for a lifeboat sending an SOS with its
hand-cranked emergency radio. He got out his logs and went over the
entries with me as he related the events. 

It started when Sparky was knocked out of a sound sleep by the large
bell on the wall right above his bunk. It was part of an automated
system that monitored 500 kc/s for a series of long dashes that are the
beginning of any SOS. They got a lot of false alarms due to QRN, but the
500 kc watch was a duty carefully followed no matter what. That night
Sparky stumbled thorough the door into the radio room which, by law, was
directly adjacent to where he slept,  and turned on the main receiver,
prepared to hear the QRN crashes that set off the alarm again.

Instead he was met with a clear, unmistakable S-O-S repeated over and
over followed by a ships call sign, then the four long dashes to set off
the 'automatic alarms'  and the SOS again. It was the clearly the "code
wheel": automatic CW sent by a turning wheel with raised bumps that
closed contacts to send the CW characters. The code wheels were used in
two places. In the lifeboat transmitters so they could be operated by
anyone whether they knew CW or not,  and in the emergency transmitter in
the CW console so Sparks could start it when they abandoned ship and the
transmitter would continue to pound out the SOS until she went down. 

He notified the Captain and they immediately started taking a fix. All
ships carried a Radio Direction Finder on the navigating bridge just for
this purpose. If there is no one listening at the other end the
direction finder was the only to know where they were. The signal was
fairly strong and they were hopeful the ship was not too far away. If it
was a lifeboat radio its radio only ran a few watts, and feeding into a
whip or even a kite antenna was about like feeding a QRP signal into a
into a short "rubber ducky" antenna on 40 meters! They were very short
range indeed. 

They followed the signal until the direction finder began to shift
rapidly meaning they were virtually on top of them. But no one on the
ship could spot any sign of a lifeboat in the darkness. They sounded
their whistle, then listened for replies. They used searchlights, but
saw only waves. And hour passed, then two, as they steamed in circles.
The signal continued as dawn approached. Then it stopped. 

Confused, concerned and disappointed to have lost the signal, the
Captain ordered Sparky to contact shore stations on the short wave links
immediately and inform them of a ship down somewhere nearby. As soon as
he made contact the mystery was solved. 

That night the ship they had head had, indeed, gone down. The crew had
taken to lifeboats and one of those lifeboats used the hand-cranked 500
kc/s emergency transmitter to send the SOS that had knocked Sparks out
of his sleep and sent the ship to their aid. 

But it wasn't in the middle of the Pacific. It was in the middle of the
Mediterranean Sea! And the crew had been rescued. That was when the
signal was silenced. 

Some quirk of propagation had allowed those miniscule watts of r-f that
on 500 kc/s were lucky to travel 50 miles, travel half way around the
world and produce a phantom signal in the Pacific ocean.

Ron AC7AC
K2 # 1289 

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