[Elecraft] REAL CW!!

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/29/07 10:32:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
mike.short at mchsi.com writes:


> So why did they all sound so different? Was is operator preference or
> equipment limitations that determined the tone? 
> 

Whole bunch of reasons.

For one thing, a marine radio's first priority is reliability. Lives may 
depend on whether or not the radio works - not just the lives of those on that 
particular ship, either. And unlike aircraft or landbased radio, repairs are 
limited to what you have on the ship. So the radio gear is way overbuilt by 
landlubber standards, and signal quality isn't the first concern. 

Another factor is that while the radio is a vital piece of equipment, ship 
owners aren't eager to replace and upgrade them too often. Part of the reason is 
the cost of new radio gear itself, but a bigger cost is that the ship isn't 
making money sitting tied to the dock getting a new radio set installed, 
checked out and approved. So they tended to use the same old radio sets as long as 
possible, meaning that rigs of many different vintages were on the air at the 
same time.

Still another factor is that for many sets the signal quality was influenced 
by how the rig was tuned up. If you've got a ton of traffic to pass and the 
weather is getting bad, you may not spend a lot of time tuning the rig for an 
absolutely perfect T9X signal when T8C will get the message through just as 
well. 

That's just what I've been told by the old salts who actually did it. 

73 de Jim, N2EY


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