[Elecraft] About the K3 cw speed

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Indeed, some commercial stations required the operators use company-provided
bugs with the weights welded on the pendulum to hold the speed down in the
15 WPM range. 

The reason was money. More traffic could be handled at 15 WPM than at high
speeds in a given amount of time, thanks to far fewer "fills" needed, and
the ships and their owners were the customers; the last thing a shore
station operator wanted to do was intimidate or irritate a ship's radio
officer. 

I've talked with a few guys who talk about how they roared along at high
speeds, but they were operators on some rare, private, closed circuit (often
military) where the same two operators passed traffic to each other day
after day. 

I worked a military CW circuit too for the Army in which I worked the same
guy(s) daily and I would get a nasty complaint from the commanders via RTTY
if we got much above 20 WPM even if we were solid copy. They didn't want to
have trouble when a new operator suddenly sat down at one end. Soldiers must
be fully interchangeable. That's what G.I. (government issue) means when
applied to the military. 

Smart commercial operations are that way too. The *last* thing they want is
to have their profit and performance dependent upon a few hard-to-replace
people.  

Ron AC7AC


-----Original Message-----
Alan Bloom wrote:

> Many years ago, a friend was listening to a couple of the QRQ boys on
> the low end of 40 meters having at it at 70 wpm.  Chuck recorded them on
> the reel-to-reel tape recorder at 7-1/2 inches per second and later
> played them back at half speed.  He said that during the entire QSO
> neither one of them ever got the other's callsign correct.  :=)

Many believe that marine radiotelegraphy back in the "good old days" was 
moderately high speed.  In fact, it wasn't at all.  We ran our wheel at 
18WPM which is what W1AW uses for bulletins I think.  All the operator 
afloat had to be able to copy was our and his call signs.  He could look 
the QSX up.  Traffic was essentially always handled slower ... 15WPM or 
below.  Press was normally sent at 18-20, it didn't require letter 
perfect copy.  Fists afloat ranged from pretty good to totally awful.

Vibroplexes were notoriously hard to slow down to the common speeds. 
See radiomarine.org/historic-5.html for one ingenious example.

50WPM is fast enough for me.

73,

Fred K6DGW