RadioBanter - View Single Post

February 25th 04, 01:39 AM

In article , PAMNO
(N2EY) writes:

No, it's not a political protest thread.

Of course it is...the POLITICS of trying to keep U.S. amateur radio
stuck with a morse code test forever and ever because you came
upon an OLD bit a data on the 'net and you refuse to give in on that
test despite the WRC-03 decision.

Just a description of what it took to be a radio operator at radio station
WAR back in WW2. Copied from a Yahoo reflector:

This from an article in Radio News of November '42 regarding the radio
station WAR.

Ahem...1942 was SIXTY-TWO YEARS AGO.

A few things changed at Washington Army Radio (WAR) in the next
few years. In 6 years they would come over from the dark side of
the modulation force and do TTY like the rest of the ACAN. By 10
years after 1952 they would start running automatic TTY relay that
could read address preambles on messages and do the switch-over
to another circuit without needing human intervention. It was a sort
of test-bed for the AUTOVON and AUTODIN to come.

While little ADA in Tokyo (3rd rank in number of messages handled
in ACAN) did a mere 220K messages a month, Washington Army
Radio did about 1200K messages a month, the rate due to auto-
switching of addresses.

"...The average person thinks of a highly trained radio operator a man who can
send radiograms with very little confusion and at a fair rate of speed....say
the messages are actually handled at around fifteen or even twenty words a
minute for a short period of time.

I'm sure "the average person" thought so SIXTY-TWO YEARS AGO.
Uh huh... Morsemanship was real high-tech...62 years ago.

You were there talking to "the average persons," right? You got the
stats from a League poll?

The radio operator on duty at WAR must send or receive or both at a rate of
more than fifty words a minute during the eight hours of his tour of duty. He
must understand the delicate equipment such as teletypwriters, radio types and
siphon recording equipment. He must be able to read manual signals at more
than thirty words a minute and to handle traffic at this speed if necessary.
He must be able to read from recording tape at more than fifty words a minute
and he must be able to operate a teletype machine..."

A TTY by Teletype Corporation is a "delicate equipment?!?!?" :-) :-)

"Delicate?!?" A Model 15 or 19?!? Hay-soose, they can crank along
at 60 WPM for days on end as long as someone feeds it paper and
ribbon...and in temperature extremes that will send a human on sick
call! Go try and lift a little Model 15 in its transit case...one-handed.

"Siphon recording equipment?" Don't siphons suck? :-)

From [the author's] recollection in 1942 when WAR operators were tested they
had to touchtype at 100 wpm, use a Kleinschmidt perforator at a high rate of
speed and copy recorded slip tape at 100 wpm as well as sending and receiving
manually when the automatic systems would not function.

Yeah, right..."touchtype at 100 WPM" on a 60 WPM machine?
Not likely...the keyboard kicks back and refuses to accept too fast
a keypress.

"When the automatic systems would not function?!?!?" HAR! HAR!

WHAT "automatic systems" in 1942? You mean the Teletype
Corporations' perf receivers and sending distributors used throughout
ACAN? Sending distributors had two read heads...would sense p-tape
run-out and automatically switch over to the other head. Very
"delicate?" Only if the manual relay person forgot to load the next
message...:-) In that case it would be "delicatessen" instead of
"delicate." The duty officer would enjoy chewing on a deli sandwich
made of butt of TTY relayer...:-)

That's riiiight...the automatic TTY switch-relay wasn't there in 1942!

I'll bet you think that Washington Army Radio just creaked along for
the ten-year interval with all-manual touchtypers creaking away at
100 words a minute on their mills, eyeshades pulled low on the
forehead, listening to sounders, clickering of the bugs as they sent
mighty morse signals over the globe when the Cold War was just
ignited.

Operators there at that time included W3GRF(sk), W0DX (sk) W9BRD/VA3ZBB, W0US
and others.

I hope they had fun operating all that "delicate" equipment weighing
hundreds of pounds per rack-full. Oh, yeah, and playing with the
"siphon."

Yeah, right, a Press Wireless PW-15 is "real delicate." Eighth-inch thick
steel panels on that puppy are "very fragile," too! :-) Probably
consider 15 KW RF output to be "QRP," I'll bet... :-) :-) :-)

I was an actual part of the whole of ACAN, Rev. Jimmie...for three years.
Were you in ACAN or there at Washington Army Radio? Or was it too
"delicate" for you?

Let's hear it for all those Sparkies winning the Great War through
morsemanship. In 1918, maybe. By 1948, NOT.

LHA / WMD