[Milsurplus] The old 2 MHz boat channels ? OT...MF Maritime Morse

[Mike Morrow]

Howie wrote:

> Also a fair number of ships I think still used A2 emission on 500, maybe 
> even a few foreign vessels running chopper-generated A2. Some really 
> raucous notes there. Not so from the coast stations.

The 47CFR81 and 83 regulations required that coast stations and ship stations be capable of both A1 and A2 (modulated at less than 1250 Hz) for the 405 to 535 kHz MF maritime band.  The regs explicity indicated that A2 should be used for distress-related transmissions if possible, at Morse speeds between 8 and 16 wpm.  Some of the radio consoles in use until the end of maritime Morse used an emergency 600m receiver that was nothing more than a crystal detector, so A2 was needed there.

> I only ran into one op on the Navy freqs with a really bad fist...
> ...he apologized for his fist. Said while he could copy really fast,
> he suffered from a sort of stage fright when his signal was going
> out...

That reminds me of the ham era during which Morse receiving skill was tested, but transmitting skill was not.  Some ham clubs would train a class to pass a 5 wpm receiving test for Novice, but do nothing to acquaint the students with key use and sending practice...that wasn't on the test.  When one of those poor souls finally got on the air, the attempts to communicate with another station were horribly discouraging when the other ops couldn't make heads or tales of the new guy's fist.  Past about 18 wpm, receiving Morse is much easier than sending competently, IMO.

I loved listeng to the MF Morse band at night, especially up to the mid-1990s when I kept a bedside Kenwood R-600 on 500 kHz at night.  I even enjoyed it 50 years ago when it seemed most AA5 AM broadact radios picked up signals near the 455 kHz IF, and some car radios picked up signals weakly as images due to the car radio's 262.5 kHz IF.

After I got out of the USN in the late 1970s, I got a Second Clasz Radiotelegraph license with Ship Radar endorsement and was toying around with returning to sea...until a few months later a permanent medical condition disqualified me for Safety of Life at Sea duties.  I kept my license active, and in 1990 I received a solicitation from a radio officers' union to join and train to fill empty radio officer billets that developed during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Maritime MF Morse was my favorite frequency band to monitor for more than 30 years.  I miss it...a lot.

Mike / KK5F