[Elecraft] OT - Cruise Operation

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

As Phil noted that all ended in 1999. 

I serviced many of those consoles while they were still required and found it interesting how the economics worked. For example, the required "back up" receiver was a crystal detector for many years after "high tech" regenerative receivers were added. In the 1980's I still found a space (now blank) for the crystal detector on some ships (and that is why emergency comms always used MCW, right up to the end in 1999, in case someone was hearing the signal on a receiver without a BFO such as a crystal detector). 

Most of the ship's LF/MF consoles used a regenerative receiver as the required backup, once a superhet took over the main receiver position. It was fun servicing them and they were effective. As one Sparks told me when I returned his regen receiver, hooked it up and noted that local broadcast band stations near the port were causing heavy blocking, "Sonny!" He said, "If'n this tubs sink'n and someone is close enough to block my regen he's the ship I WANT to talk to!"

As Archie Bunker said, "Those were the days!" 

73, Ron AC7AC 

-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bob McGraw K4TAX
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2017 11:17 AM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] OT - Cruise Operation

My son, KD4ODR, and myself, K4TAX and our wives on a Royal Caribbean cruise many years ago had the opportunity to visit the Radio Room of the ship.   I was amazed at the "antique" equipment still in place.   The Chief Radio Officer, in addition to the officer on duty, did indicate it wasn't used for much of anything, although the automatic SOS system was still functional.  At this time they were copying traffic for various ships and all was in CW running in the background.   He was surprised that I was able to follow along with many of the messages for other ships.  He indicated they monitored the channel 24/7 and could easily pick out their ships call as it appeared in a string of calls when traffic existed for their ship.

I presume since that time all of this has gone away in view of satellite communications and such.

73

Bob, K4TAX