[GreenKeys] Slightly OT: CW keyer for a transmitter?

[w8au at sssnet.com]

At 02:45 PM 1/3/2014, Roy Morgan wrote:
>As I understand it, such machines were used by the maritime service 
>shore stations. They were called "the wheel".   The thing would run 
>for hours on end, for years, to send the call and short message on 
>the shore station frequency so the marine at-sea operators could 
>tune in the signal and know the station was ready for business.

This type of wheel would not have conveyed the "beacon" message that 
shore stations sent.  Too short.
In fact this wheel may have only put out a 3 letter call, if 
that.  The jury is still out on this one. :-)

Shore stations had a separate keying head and used a punched tape 
loop to repeat the CQ, the Callsign, QSX instructions, etc, before 
starting over.

>Also, the transmitting station might well be separated from the 
>receive site by many miles (perhaps 30 or more) so  a "dit" sent by 
>a ship between characters of the shore station would be heard by the 
>op on duty, and he would shift to the hand key to answer the calling station.

Since the ship/shore operation was half-duplex, the incoming calls 
were never on the shore stations freq.
So a ship calling in would not have to worry about being overridden 
by the shore transmitter.  They usually
called the shore station callsign over and over until the shore opr 
heard them and stopped the "wheel" to
send a "de."  The ship station, hearing the "de," would then give his 
call and the exchanges of tfc would start.

KSM holds to these time-tested routines every Saturday (except 
holidays) and I've had the pleasure many times to listen to their 
"tfc list" and then to call on the band where I hear their 5 kW 
signal best, and hope they hear
the 200 watter I'm using aboard NWVC during annual cruises. (they 
always do)  :-)   (NWVC is USS LST325)

Perry     w8au