On 8/22/2013 3:17 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
In my experience with commercial (and to a lesser extent Military) CW operations, one of the most important skills an operator had to have was the ability to copy a huge variety of fists, speeds, spacing and weighing.
Indeed Ron, and believe me, in 56/57, the year I worked coastal marine, the menagerie of fists afloat were exceeded only by the combinations of carrier whine, whine superimposed on the MCW, drift, and chirp. It wasn't uncommon for the chirp to take it from one side of the passband to the other, hence the MCW [which also chirped some]. If the dits were, on average, more or less shorter than the dahs, it was a good day. :-) I know the reasons for all this, and I forgive all of them, but it all did make copy a challenge. And, since people were paying ... a lot ... to have their messages sent *and* received correctly, correct copy was essential.
The other coast stations, the Coast Guard, and the few Navy stations on the other hand were impeccable and precise, and thoroughly QRQ. I was relaying a wx summary to NMO once, it was sort of longish and boring, as wx summaries tended to be then. I was loping along at around 23-24 on my J-36 by Lionel, and he broke and said, "QRQ OK" My sending limit on my bug was about 30-32, and he got it all. Really great operators!
The good news is that I learned to recognize ships by their sound and ops by their fist before I ever heard their call. :-) The surprising thing to me then and still now is that the ham CW bands were filled with generally stable signals, some mild chirps occasionally, and a few key clicks ... and generally very good fists if the ships were to be the standard. They still are.
73, Fred K6DGW - Northern California Contest Club - CU in the 2013 Cal QSO Party 5-6 Oct 2013 - www.cqp.org ______________________________________________________________ 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
