[Elecraft] O.T. Morse is not dead, at least in the U.S. Navy

[Bob McGraw K4TAX]

One of my class mates signed up for the Navy right after graduation from 
High School.  He ended up being a radio operator. Has retold the story 
many times of several ops sitting in front of a mill {typewriter} and 
all were copying the same message from multiple receivers.  The average 
message speed ran somewhat above 20 WPM.  In one instance a message was 
sent from command that a very large message of several thousand word 
groups was to be sent.  The best operators were assigned to the duty.  
He says they copied a thousand word groups and then sending station 
would break for confirmation.  His response to the sending station was 
RR QRQ.........      {Roger Roger Send Faster}

73

Bob, K4TAX


On 11/20/2017 3:34 AM, Richard S. Leary wrote:
> Kevin,
> My two cents worth. I was a USAF Morse Intercept Operator for almost 8
> years. Started in Mar 1955. School was 7 months. Of that, CW training was 3+
> hours a day, 5 days a week, for 7 months. Graduating speed requirement was
> 20 wpm. I started knowing zilch, ended up school at 23 wpm. Characters
> taught then were A thru Z, 1 thru 0, plus "special characters". Total
> character count was in excess of 45 characters. Some special characters were
> colon (:), semi-colon (;), ampersand (&), dollar ($), exclamation point (!),
> quotes ("), plus other normal punctuation marks. I worked as a MIO for 6 1/2
> years in Europe. Germany, Turkey, and England. Consecutive tours. We copied
> CW as it was sent. If it ended up looking like Greek, or any other language,
> it was still CW, but transcribed onto paper, as whatever was sent. No
> computers back then, just a pair of Hammerlund SP-600's, R-390's or 51J's,
> and a Royal or Remington manual mil spec typewriter, and lots of 6 ply, fan
> fold paper with carbons. In Turkey, the building next to our ops area was
> Navy ops. Their CT's were reknown for being pretty excellent operators. Glad
> to see the Navy MIO's back.  Just my $0.02 worth.
>
> 73,  Rick, W7LKG
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
> [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Kevin Cozens
> Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2017 23:19
> To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] O.T. Morse is not dead, at least in the U.S. Navy
>
> On 2017-11-19 04:24 AM, Richard Lamont wrote:
>> The people being trained by the US Navy to read Morse are intercept
>> operators.
> The article indicated that they are only learning morse for a standard latin
> (ie. English) alphabet. A number of years ago I visited the radio room while
> on a boat cruise in the Caribbean. The radio operator was copying down morse
> coming in over the radio. I tried to see what I could copy in my head but I
> couldn't make sense of it. When I looked at what the radio operator was
> writing down it was Greek. I don't mean as in "it was Greek to me" but that
> it was actually in the Greek language. The US Navy morse interceptors will
> need to be able to copy morse in multiple languages to be truly effective.
>
> --
> Cheers!
>
> Kevin.
>
> http://www.ve3syb.ca/           |"Nerds make the shiny things that distract
> Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172      | the mouth-breathers, and that's why we're
>                                   | powerful!"
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