[GreenKeys] Code, Hams, tty/rtty and stuff...

[Bob McConnell]

Jeffrey D Angus wrote:
> But I'll add something else to all this:
> 
> What got you started in TTY and RTTY?

When I was in sixth grade ('60-61) my classroom was in a rented facility 
next door to the school. The local radio station was in the same 
building. They had an older printer copying one of the wire services in 
the front office, just inside the door. I was fascinated by that 
printer, but they had it in a large insulated box to minimize the noise 
it put out. So I didn't get a very close look at it. They would tear off 
those Canary colored sheets, cut them up and use them in their hourly 
news programs. I think Marty tolerated my presence because he suspected 
my dad was teaching me how to repair radios and TVs. But he showed me a 
lot about how the station operated, including the remote link to their 
1000W AM transmitter on top of the hill. I think they are up to 5KW now.

I guess the rest was the US Navy's fault. They turned me into a 
Radioman, then taught me how to fix those noisy, smelly contraptions. 
RMA school was at NTC Bainbridge MD in 1970. I got there in mid 
February, had four weeks to learn to type 40 WPM on a manual Olivetti 
typewriter, then six weeks to learn to copy and send Morse code at 14 
WPM or faster. That got me into 8 weeks of Radio school and practice 
watches in their mock up shipboard radio rooms. I finished near the end 
of June, but my initial orders were canceled and I sat around for three 
weeks waiting for the new ones. I had asked for the West Coast, but they 
overshot by a couple thousand miles. I was sent to the USS Cochrane, 
DDG-21 at Pearl Harbor.

Between my two deployments to Vietnam, I was sent to NTC San Diego in 
February '72 for 14 weeks of TTY Repair school. I completed that course 
at the top of Class 72-08. I think I still have the Alpha-Beta-Tel card 
they issued to us. I wish I had the room to run a couple of those 
printers now.

Bob McConnell Ex-RM2, NFIT, NLM
N2SPP