I was one of the techs who demonstrated that gear to Phil's FCC engineers for their annual SOLAS inspection on the San Francisco Bay. It was a simple test to ensure the desiccant cartridges were still blue (dry), see that it made RF and could hear signals on both 600 meters and HF and that the auto keyer wheel that automatically pumped out the SOS and ship's call sign worked. (So anyone could send the distress signal by turning the crank - they didn't need to know Morse. Once in the lifeboat they just kept cranking so rescue ships could use their radio direction finders.)
One of Phil's inspectors passed on a funny story to me about testing them to ensure they were water-tight. The technique was to tie a line onto it and toss it over the side, then pull it in and look for any signs of water. So they tied a line on it, tossed over the side and then noticed that no one had tied off the line to the railing. I understand it's still somewhere on the bottom of the San Francisco bay. I was never asked to do that :-) Many, perhaps most, Sparks were anything but "ancient" - many in their 20's or 30's. A number of O.T.s got drug out of retirement during the first Gulf War because the USA has only a tiny merchant marine and we were very short on crews for the ships pulled out of the mothball fleets to haul military supplies. But that was not normal. 73, Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- Hah, hah... I imagine it was a real judgement call for the FCC inspector as to just how thoroughly the lifeboat radio must be tested while some ancient "sparks" was grinding away wheezing and sputtering at the crank... 73, Drew AF2Z ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
