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Posted on 02/23/2007 6:45:07 PM PST by vintage patriot
Morse code is in need of some serious SOS.
The language of dots and dashes, first used during the infancy of electronic communication in the mid-1800s, is going the way of Latin.
Beginning today, amateur or "ham" radio operators in the United States won't be tested in Morse code – also known as Continuous Wave – in order to be licensed by the federal government.
In an effort to advance the hobby, the Federal Communications Commission in December agreed to eliminate the five-words-per-minute Morse code requirement for people seeking their upper-level class licenses.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Same here, I used to be roughly 50/50 and then gradually did more and more CW, there seems to be countless CW events and contests. And there have been plenty of times I couldn't get through with voice...
"About 90% of my air time is spent working cw. There have been many times while on 40 meter ssb, mode of operation had to be switched to CW due to declining band conditions."
We have a telegraph in our house. The kids love to play. Each has a key/sounder setup, along with the one in my radio room.
True, take a look at the Rockmite, a half watt, or 500MW transceiver, very small. Smallwonder labs, supply's kits. I built one for 20 meters in 2004 just to see how many QSL cards I could get. In a period of around 7 months I recieved a number of them, 15 states and 2 countries. It was fun.
"A low power CW transmitter can be made with a very
small parts count and with 1 watt of output power and the
right conditions you can be heard hundreds or even
thousands of miles away."
I like the 'Introduction to Morse Code' audio CD from the arrl.org. Item #8314. Our club KG6YSX in Orange County Southern Cal still uses and teaches code. Its listed on qrz.com
"How did you learn CW?"
Nifty, do you have some more info on setting up something like that?
"We have a telegraph in our house. The kids love to play. Each has a key/sounder setup, along with the one in my radio room."
I forgot about safe water buoys flashing Morse "A". Also oil platforms often have lights that flash Morse code "U".
My code is ready for reactivation at any time. Latin, BTW, is alive and well, although modernized for the purposes of biological descriptions and naming.
Great TITLE!!
We had a radio operator on a tug I was on in the Pacific long ago. He could take CW and type up the message while carrying on a conversation and eating supper.
The November Sweepstakes (CW) and Straight Key Night are the
two I try to get in on.
Mike
Good story...and a small world. You overflew us on that flight!
My father with a new LT, and Operations Officer at NAS N.O. in '54! I think I was in the 4th grade...
As jets came on the scene, the station was moved in '57 (I think) to Alvin Calendar Field 90 miles North of Lake Ponchitran.
As dad was scheduled to take on another job on the West Coast (NPGS) that year, he bought an old J-5 Piper Cub and commuted from the Lake Ponchitrane Lake front airport to the NAS.
His was the only civilian aircraft authorized to land, on-going, at the facility. All hands got a charge out of looking down the flightline of F9F's/AD-1's to see his red/yellow Cub tied down out there!
Ooops...the thread was about Morse Code.... my bad!!
But, yeah, memories....
p.s.....on my profile page, in the background, you'll see a SNB/D-18/Bugsmasher/Bamboo Bomber...and I've ridden 'shotgun' as well :)
Many hams on FR. I wish someone would start up a ham ping list again.
I was an intercept operator in the Army Security Agency for seven years. I can still copy at 28 words a minute after being away for decades.
Dots too bad. Dash it all.
My father is an Extra class. He used to be a volunteer examiner in Florida, but gave that up a couple of years ago.
He was always unhappy that I refused to learn Morse Code sufficiently to take the exam, especially since I was able to pass the General exam just from what I knew hanging out with him.
From what I read/recall (don't quote me on the details!), a radio lighthouse features an omnidirectional antenna and a pair of signal blocking devices 180 degrees apart that rotate once every two minutes. The whole thing is surrounded by a shield that restricts transmission to something slightly over a 120-degree angle. Every minute, the lighthouse transmits a pattern consisting of its call sign (slow Morse code) during the period when the vanes aren't blocking anything, followed by a series of 130 2Hz pips. To find your direction from the lighthouse, count the number of pips before and after the "gap", then the figure out how many pips were lost in the gap. Add half that number to the number of pips before the gap, and add that result to the base angle for the lighthouse, and that will tell you your direction to that lighthouse. Because the angle is absolute rather than relative, a pair of fixes will suffice identify one's location.
If you pare down SSB to that narrow a bandwidth, though, doesn't it require better signal conditions to remain intelligible than when using the higher-bandwidth AM? If using a narrower bandwidth for one's signal means that one has to speak more slowly to be understood, that would seem to limit the usefulness of reducing bandwidth.
Suppose I want to send the message "MY DOG ROVER HAS FLEAS". With decent audio bandwidth, it could be sent in 2-3 seconds (with good audio bandwidth, less than 1.5 seconds). CW at 30WPM would take ten seconds. At 15WPM, twenty seconds; at 5WPM, a minute.
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