[Elecraft] Fw: Visual CW

Sun Feb 23 10:58:00 2003

I've been retired for 10 years from Grumman Aircraft where I worked for
nearly 30 years in flight test instrumentation, mostly on the E-2C
Hawkeye, an early warning radar plane carrying a 1 megawatt radar...I was
already retired when I read the story, which was written in defense of CW
on the bands...I found it hard to believe that the Navy would discontinue
visual, but stranger things have happened...

Grumman was situated in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood, a
situation that did not exist when they first set up shop in the '30's...A
radar tech accidently fired up the radar in an E-2C one night and tore up
TV reception in the neighborhood, prompting a flood of telephone calls to
the control tower...The aircraft was jacked up for landing gear service
so the "weight-on-wheels" was inoperative...Weight on wheels eliminates
the ability to retract the landing gear and transmit with the radar..
This incident made the possibility that communication between ships was
knocked out believable...

As I remember the story, it was submitted to the publication by someone
who claimed to be there when it happened...I am going to continue to
research my "library" to see if I can find it...I thought maybe there
would be someone else on the reflector who also read it and could fill in
the blanks...

Jerry, wa2dkg

Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 15:50:15 -0800 (PST)
From: Denis Dimick <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Re: Cw in the military

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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