I have a photo of a commercial operator at KPH in northern California with a heavy cable clamp attached to the arm of his bug. When working ships, they often keep the speed under 20 WPM. Rick - K7MW
------------------------------------------------------ That's my old buddy, LR, Rick. I now have his key. LR became an SK in the early 1990's and his wife passed it on to me. He was also a Ham, K6ETY, but he wasn't active the last twenty years. Les (LR) was my High School Radio Shop teacher in the 1950's. He quit teaching right after I had his class. (No, I never asked him about the connection.) Les and I ended up working side by side at Lockheed Aircraft, then Sylvania Electronic systems, then he went back to sea for several years before finally marrying his childhood sweetheart and settling down at KPH in the 1970s at age 60-something. I have the key and the cable clamp. It still has the dymo label with his sine, LR, that he put there back in early 1960's. Les had deformed feet which disqualified him for military service in WWII, so he signed on with the merchant marine and ran the gauntlet back and forth through the submarines lying in wait in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Looking for a quieter life after the war, he became a High School Teacher. I'm not sure he ever decided which was more dangerous, the classroom or those torpedoes. I don't know what happened to the key he had then, but he bought the second one, the one I have, when he went back to sea in the 1960's. Some operators working closed circuits had the luxury of really working up serious speed, but the commercial operators on the shore stations like KPH were responsible for making it easy for the radio officers on the ships, and many of them were none too fast. So they were always ready to QRS and rarely got to work above 20 wpm. After all, that shipboard operator was the customer and everyone knows what they say about customers and being right. Besides, commercial operators know that more traffic gets handled at moderate speeds without fills than one can do at higher speeds with corrections. Some of the old pre WWII commercial shore stations used to provide company bugs that the operators had to use. Those bugs had the weights welded in place for 15 wpm to discourage speed sending. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
