BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - FT-857 vs 706 MkII ?

Larry

Bruce in Alaska wrote in news:bruceg-
:

I have worked the old AT&T West Coast HF Marine Station, KMI, while
running an N550, with the covers off, and feeding a Bird Kw Dummy Load,
from the Engineering Department, of the Old Northern Radio Building, on
West Commadore Way, in Seattle, Washington, on both 8 and 12 Mhz,
with excellent Signal Reports. It is amazing what can happen when the
Band is open........

Bruce in alaska Lordy, those were the days........

I could hear KMI on my Hallicrafters Sky Buddy when I was a kid learning
the code. I've copied KMI many times while growing code speed when I was
10 years old....er, ah, in 1956...(c; Thanks for the practice, Bruce!

As a kid, one of my prized possessions was a letter and QSL card and some
glossy photos from the guys at WOM in Miami. I was copying their ship
lists one night and they had propagation problems with a freighter I've
long forgotten the name of. The ship was dead in the water out in the
Atlantic and needed some steam engine parts. WOM was all he said he
could hear in the storm.

After sweet talking my dad and promising to mow the lawn for 10 years
without a fuss, he let me CALL WOM on the telephone, which was really
expensive in those days. An operator at WOM answered and I told them I
could hear the ship very well in upstate NY (Moravia SW of Syracuse) and
could relay for them the message the ship had sent. The Morse op came on
the phone and I read him my message copy. He repeated it out on their
powerful transmitter for confirmation. I passed my code test at WOM that
night...(c; I had all the part numbers and addresses correctly. The WOM
guys seemed quite happy I was listening to their freq pair. He took my
address and I didn't think much of it. I was just too excited. After
hanging up the phone, I went back to listening to WOM and his input freq.
The op sent out a thank you message to "The kid in upstate NY" and told
the ship what I'd done. The ship, replied with a thank you to me, too.

I don't remember if I heard a single word in school the rest of that
week. Dad quit yelling at me to take off my headset and go to bed on
school nights. Very unusually, he didn't complain about the ever-
increasing number of uncoiled transformer windings that hung in the trees
in our back yard after that, either. He never understood me. He was a
simple, hard working machinist at Smith Corona typewriters.

Too excited to sit still, my teacher asked what was wrong with me in
class with all the figiting. Her mistake. She DID ask. So, I told
her...er, ah...them...my class. Learning about the French and Indian
Wars long ago didn't nearly hold the classes attention like my story of
relaying steamship parts orders to one of the biggest marine radio
stations on the planet....(c;

We were listening....Sure glad you were transmitting....thanks!

73 DE W4CSC K