[GreenKeys] Reminiscing (too long)

[jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu]

Uh, now you're going to get me on a nostalgia trip.  Back about 1953 I was
a teenager, not yet a ham, and fascinated by the teleprinters I could see
in the newspaper office and radio broadcast station and Western Union
office in the home town.  The guys at the telephone company let me borrow
a book that explained how these machines worked.
 
We had no TV and a pretty good news stand that
carried a lot of the ham and radio/tv magazines.  Wayne Green had an
occasional RTTY column in CQ, and it was there that I learned a 
teleprinter was something an individual could own and use on the air.
He also mentioned Merrill Swan and RTTY magazine.  I went through the
classified ads in QST and found a machine for sale by the late W6DOU,
Paul Lemon of Hayward, CA, a Model 21-A printer.  Only $25 as I recall.
When I got it the Western Union operator supplied a roll of tape and
a ribbon for it.  The 21-A was a multi-magnet machine and thus needed
a receiving distributor to receive start-stop signals.  I guess most of
the hams using them on the air had Model 12 distributors.  The
alternative was an electronic receiving distributor designed by Cecil
Crafts W6ZBV and written up in RTTY.  Also I would need a T.U.; and
somehow got a copy of the article by W2PAT in QST.  One of the telephone
men "liberated" a polar relay for the project.  (By the way I worked
W2PAT on PSK31 just a couple of years ago.)  

I wrote to Merrill to subscribe to RTTY and get the back issue containing
Cecil's distributor design.  This was the beginning of a long friendship.
Merrill was the most patient, friendly, and helpful person I have ever
had the pleasure to meet.  I would write him long letters asking questions
and he would always reply with answers and encouragement.

I built the distributor, which involved something like 21 tubes, some of
which I bought and some of which had been pulled out of mobile radios
by the telephone company guys but were still almost good enough to use.
I never got it to work, but it made the printer put out a lot of fine
gibberish.  I had a lot of fun working it by hand and seeing all the parts
function just as described in the book I had read.  One problem was a
mistake in the printed schematic, which I only became aware of several
years later.  Another problem was that you were supposed to send from a
keyboard to adjust the thing, and I had no keyboard.

I went on to engineering school, got my ham license, and got the 
University of Arkansas club station W5YM on RTTY using a Model 28 that
Teletype Corp. donated.  I had a couple of summer jobs with Teletype
and that way got to meet Ray Morrison W9GRW and see his fabulous basement
and garage.  On one visit he handed me a box and started filling it with
pieces of broken Model 15s until I had enough parts to make a working
machine.  I spent my spare time that summer taking it all apart, cleaning
off the grease and rust, and reassembling it; and when I was done it
worked.  

After graduation I went into the Air Force and was sent to Edwards AFB
in California.  This was about a two-hour drive from Merrill Swan's
home in Arcadia, so I spent lots of weekend afternoons in his ham
shack discussing RTTY and all its intricacies.  Merrill in person was
everything and more he had been by mail: friendly and kindly and helpful,
just the nicest person you would ever want to know.

I also had a fine friendship with Bob Weitbrecht, W6NRM.  I used to
work him from W5YM back when he was at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin
where he was W9TCJ.  When he left Yerkes he came through Fayetteville
for a visit before heading to California.  If you read old issues of RTTY
you find he was constantly traveling around to promote RTTY and help 
others to get on the air.  You also see his many technical contributions.
While he never dropped out of RTTY, he did become less visible in later
years because he was busy with the promotion of teleprinters for the
deaf.  He invented the modem that is still used in that service.

Jim W6JVE

  


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jhaynes at alumni dot uark dot edu