[GreenKeys] Wayne Green W2NSD (SK)

[Jim Haynes]

On Sat, 21 Sep 2013, Jack Hart wrote:
> In December, 1951, he began writing a bi-monthly "Radio Teletype"
> column for CQ Magazine (how o I know? I just read it).

Yes, that's how I learned of the existence of amateur RTTY.  The news
stand in my home town carried CQ magazine.  His article also put me in
touch with Merrill Swan, W6AEE, publisher of RTTY which at the time was
the journal of the RTTY Society of Southern California.  It quickly
became the nationwide publication dedicated to RTTY, since Merrill put
it out regularly.

There was a New York centered group which published a bulletin edited
by Wayne, and which preceded RTTY but which was published rather
irregularly.
> 
> He eventually took over CQ Magazine and
> 
> the RTTY column was then written by Byron Kretzman, W2JTP.
> 
> Wayne had always given credit to John Williams, W2BFD, for being the
> 
> "Father of Ham RTTY". W2BFD apparently acquired one of the first
> 
> Model 12's to be put on the Ham bands. He eventually was able to
> 
> work a deal to acquire more TTY's (from Ma Bell?)

I've heard somewhere that they came from the New York Police Department,
which had to phase them out because Teletype quit making spare parts for
them.  The New York group also had the ability to get junk from Western
Union.
  > 
> getting a lot of Hams onto RTTY.  W2BFD designed one of the first
> 
> "RTTY Converters" that was built to operate a Model 12. The
> 
> converter took up an entire 2-ft high rack panel and it had a lot
> 
> of autostart circuitry.

And, so long as operation was limited to VHF, the Model 12 was reasonably
satisfactory.  On HF it made an awful lot of RF noise because the motors
were speed governed and the receiving distributor was electrical, hence
lots of inductive circuits being switched on and off.  There were some
modifications developed to drive the code level magnets and the motor
governor with vacuum tubes to eliminate the noise from sparking contacts.

  There was always a little friction
> 
> between W2BFD and W2JTP...it was evident in comments Byron always
> 
> made in the CQ RTTY column. I  believe W2BFD died in the 1960's.
>
I'm not sure it was "always", as in the earlier days John Williams was
always called "The Old Maestro" in the pages of CQ.  But later there seems
to have been a falling-out; and then CQ was always warning hams against
dealing with John as a supplier of equipment.

> Ham RTTY was officially "started" around 1948 and all operation was
> 
> on VHF using AFSK (there were several small pockets of
> 
> RTTY enthusiasts on the East and West coasts).
> 
> Lowband FSK operation was only permitted in the 1952 timeframe,

At first it was permitted only on the 11 meter band.  It was in February
1953 that FSK was allowed on all the HF bands, in the CW-only portions
of the bands.

ARRL was not very friendly to RTTY at first; hence CQ was the main
source of published information about the mode.  I believe ARRL's
reluctance came from two notions.  First, that using nearly 1 KHz
of bandwidth to transmit 60 wpm was a gross waste of bandwidth, in
the CW portions of the bands.  (At first shift was mandated to be
850 Hz, which was standard for government and commercial use at the
time.)  Second, to operate RTTY you had to acquire a machine somehow.
ARRL was biased against things you couldn't build for yourself or
buy newly manufactured.
> 
Wayne was also involved in the Karlson loudspeaker marketing, even
touting it in his ARTS RTTY bulletin.  The theory of operation of the
Karlson speaker was totally bogus; but I've heard they sold like
hotcakes to the credulous.