[GreenKeys] Interesting motor

[Jim Sheldon]

Duncan is most likely right on this one.  Can't see the whole "Wheel" to decode it, but it's probably a "channel marker" that was played when there was no traffic to be sent to keep the channel open and also like he said for propagation testing.  May or may not be an encoded callsign.  Some channel markers were simply 2 or 3 letters or letters/numbers that identified which commercial communications company owned the rights to that particular frequency.  The channel markers were usually sent at slower speeds, 20-30 WPM.

This stems from the days before teletype when most international telegrams were sent at around 200 wpm high speed morse.  They were copied on McElroy Electronics & Boehme inked paper tape readers that had super high speed tape pulling mechanism's and magnetically driven pens that inked the dots and dashes on the paper tape.  The tape was given to transcribers that had a tape puller and tray set in front of them.  They controlled the speed and direction of the tape passing in front of them with a foot pedal control and copied the morse visually rather than hearing it.  

I learned how to do it early on in my Army career, but never got really good at it.  I was always much faster hearing and typing the CW than watching the dits & dahs flow past my eyes and typing!

Setting up the reader to get good print on the incoming high speed morse dots & dashes was an art in itself and you had to have a really good strong signal for it to work right.

Jim - W0EB


> Looks like it is for high-speed Morse.  The wheel on the end is
> encoded with dots & dashes - I can see "RIS" on it - probably
> part of a callsign or location.  These were used to key transmitters
> when there was not traffic to keep the channel open and for
> propagation testing.  I've never seen one like this, but they were
> often referred to as a "Wheel".
>
> Maybe RD at MRHS can enlighten us??
>
> Duncan
> K2OEQ
>
> On 02-Jan-14 22:33,
> paul0926 at comcast.net wrote:
>
>>
>> This looks interesting:
>> http://www.ebay.com/itm/400637247348
>> What is it?
>> Paul
>> W2TTY
>
>
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