On Tue, 8 May 2007 03:15:51 EDT, BNB Sound wrote in .com:
I've been an amateur operator for a little over a year now and one of
my favorite parts of the hobby is soaking up stories from previous
decades. One of the things I'm curious about is professional HF work.
I've heard it mentioned in passing that when the early trans-Atlantic
cables went down they would shift to HF circuits as available to try
and pick up the slack.

So, what else is out there. I know the military has always been
heavily invested in radio gear, but what else was (and is?) there? I'd
love to hear from anyone who ever brought home a paycheck for working
the airwaves.

When I was stationed at Camp Drake, Japan, some time after Len left,
we were still using HF circuits to ship data (60 Baud TTY, 2400 Baud
"high speed data", and other stuff slower than 2400 Baud) to various
places around the world. I was there 2 years, starting in Jan '68. The
TX and RX sites were in Kashiwa and Owada, though I can't remember
which was which.

We also used HF circuits at Osan AB, ROK, and some other places where
I was stationed. Never a hint of Morse, though; it was all TTY and
synchronous data.

You do know about the Coastie CW op's pages at
http://www.radiomarine.org/tales.html? These are gripping, and in
one case I found them hair-raising.

I, too, would love to hear from non-military, non-amateur HF users.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO

Tired old sysadmin