[Elecraft] Re: Cw in the military

Sat Feb 22 18:54:00 2003

One more urban ledgan dies a slow pianful death..

On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 [email protected] wrote:

> Regarding the below, as a Chief Petty Officer in the USN, I know that the 
> signalmen are still required to know and be able to use CW with the visual 
> lamps designed for that purpose.  Just like the fact that most battle 
> communication within a modern Navy ship is still by sound-powered phones, much 
> line of sight ship to ship communication is still by CW lamps and signal flags.
> 
> As a fire control radar specialist, I can also tell you that there never was, 
> nor ever will be a radar system that could blank all other radio communications.
> 
> Cheers,
> Chuck
> KG6GUF
> 
> A few years back I read an interesting story about the discontinuance of
> CW in the military...I am working from memory and all the facts might not
> be accurate...I haven't been able to locate the source of the story, I
> thought it was the QCWA journal, but I have all the back issues and
> cannot find it...
> 
> As I recall, a Navy task force was conducting sea trials on a new
> radar...Aircraft were launched, the radar was fired up, and all
> communication between ships was wiped out...They didn't want to shut the
> radar down until all aircraft were retrieved...One ship went dead in the
> water and was being overtaken by another ship...The only means they had
> to communicate was by visual CW with lamps, and there was a collision
> because nobody aboard knew CW, the "dead" mode...
> 
> Jerry, wa2dkg
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