[Elecraft] REAL CW!!

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

These guys have it right, from what I saw. In the US maritime service the
FCC kept increasing the rules for stability, signal purity, keying, etc.,
but the rules applied to when the equipment was manufactured, so an old
console that drifted and yooped was legal as long as it was still in
service. 

Ship owners never changed out something that worked, so as long as the radio
console was repairable (and there wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed)
they kept the same old console. 

On an old vessel in the early 1990's I found an ancient black RCA console.
If you've not seen a shipboard radio console, there are pictures of one
aboard a restored WWII cargo ship here:

 http://www.arrl.org/news/features/1999/0216/2/?nc=1

The vessel I was called to work on had been taken out of the "mothball
fleet" to haul supplies to the Persian Gulf during Gulf War I and my eye was
drawn to a little panel on the console marked "Crystal Detector" with space
for a galena crystal and cat's whisker! You see, all radio consoles had both
a main and a backup receiver as well as main and backup transmitters. At one
time that crystal set was the "backup receiver". The crystal was long gone.
The console had been "upgraded" to a regenerative receiver for use in case
the main superhetrodyne receiver broke down in an emergency, but the panel
to mount the crystal was still there. 

That's why MCW was required for all emergency communications: crystal sets
don't have BFO's <G>. 

Ron AC7AC

-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Fred Jensen
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 7:54 PM
To: Elecraft Reflector
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] REAL CW!!


Mike Short wrote:
>  So why did they all sound so different? Was is operator preference or 
> equipment limitations that determined the tone?
> 
> Mike
> AI4NS
> (Just a young pup. Only 8 years of ham radio with 25 years in between
> licenses...)

Hi there Young Pup,

Equipment was different then, and really so aboard ship.  Chirp and 
rough AC notes were common when I worked coastal marine in 57 [HS 
senior].  Shipboard power was often not the most stable you'd likely 
find today, radios tended to be old ... the recording was from the 70's, 
some of that equipment may have been pre-WW2 ... and operating condx 
weren't always all that great.  The maritime service tended to sail 
their fleets until they rusted to the bottom.

I had a hard time copying some of that and 50 years ago as a 16yr old, 
it would have been a slam dunk.  We're used to incredibly stable 
receivers and transmitters, pure notes, perfect spacing of CW 
[well...maybe not on SKN :-) ].  Most then used bugs, but there were a 
number of straight keys as well, you can spot them in the audio clip.

Many of the bugs were hard to slow down.  Vibroplex's were notorious. 
Being a teen and very poor, my bug was a J-36 I'd found at Sam's Surplus 
Sales on Pico St in downtown Los Angeles.  It was sort of 
proletarian-looking [OK, very proletarian], not shiny like those of my 
crew mates, but it could produce civilized dot speeds without added and 
ugly weights.

The recording at Ron's first link, except for call signs, sounds like 
what I heard on 600m in the mid-20th century.

Thanks for coming back to the hobby.  We need you Mike.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2007 CQP Oct 6-7
- www.cqp.org
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