[Mumfier 33 — flpn‘f 1994

Buzza Morse Code filpparatus 1M). 2 lSSN 0953—6426

MORS UM MAGNIFICAT was first published as a quarterly magazine in Holland, in 1983, by the late Rinus Hellemons PAOBFN. Now published six times a year in Britain, it aims to provide international coverage ofall aspects of Morse telegraphy, past present and future. MORS UM MAGNIFICAT is for all Morse enthusiasts, amateur or professional, active or retired. It brings together material which wouldotherwise be lost to posterity, providing an invaluable source of interest, reference and record relating to the traditions and practice ofMorse.

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: lYear 2 Years United Kingdom: £12.00 £22.50 Europe, including Eire: £12.75 £24.00 Elsewhere: Surface mail £12.75 £24.00 @wE Airmail £15.50 £29.50 a Payment by Access, Eurocard, Master-card or Visa is also accepted; quote your card number and expiry date. Please note that. owing to very high bank charges for currency exchange, we are unable to accept overseas cheques, drafts, money orders, etc., unless payable in sterling. Overseas cheques and drafts must be drawn on a London clearing bank. Make all cheques payable to ‘G C Arnold Partners’.

Subscribers in North America can now make payment in US Dollars to our subscription agents there, Wise Owl Worldwide Publications, 4314 West 238th Street, Torrance, CA 90505-4509, USA (see page 48 for further details)

EDITORIALAND SUBSCRIPTIONOFFICES: Morsum Magnificat, 9 Wetherby Close, Broadstone, Dorset BHIB 818, England. Telephone/FAX: Broadstone (0202) 658474: International +44 202 658474 EDITOR Geoff Arnold G3GSR CONSULTANT EDITOR Tony Smith G4FAl (until further notice, please write to Tony care of the Editorial office) © G C Arnold Partners 1994. Printed by Hertfordshire Display Company. Ware, Hens

ON OUR FRONT COVER Buzza Morse Code Apparatus No.2, made in Australia, possibly in the 19305. Base, ‘Masonite'; key and switch lever 0.05in (1.3mm) steel strap; pressure required to close key 800 grams (!); contacts are steel nuts and washers; buzzer appears to be a commercial item of average quality. An example in poor condition seen in an antique shop recently was priced at A$100 (about £50). Collection/Photo:Colin MacKinnonVK2DYM (Buzza also made more professional-looking keys andfurther information on this company and their products will be welcomed. — Ed.) Comment Contents

NE OF MY GREAT DELIGHTS IN LIFE 2 News is browsing through old books and maga- 6 MM Back Issues & zines. Not just those which deal with In the Next Issue 0telegraphy or wireless, but any which describe the 6 Radio Bygones then ‘state of the art’ in other mechanical or scien- 7 Chinese Dit-Dahs tific too. In the I be topics, process, never cease to 8 The First Time amazed at how the just true old saying ‘There’s I Saw Paris nothing new under the sun’ turns out to be; forjust 16 Words, Words, Words... how many years the cunning ideas of today have 18 actually been in use. What Hath God Wrought! 22 Short Breaks The scale may be different, and the way in which the ideas are implemented will no doubt 24 Showcase have changed considerably, but many of the prin— 26 Polar Radio, 1912 Style ciples used in today’s high-tech equipment were 34 Info Please! actually thought up a century or more ago. 35 MM Bookshelf I such idea I came across just an whilst was 36 More on the Aircraft for searching an interesting illustration for the back Identification Switch cover of this issue of MM. The idea is that of a 38 MM Binders printer based on the principal of pressing a piece of 38 Hear, Hear! paper against a rotating type-wheel at the precise 39 moment that the desired character is facing the ‘Infatuation’ paper. The same basic idea has been used, in either 39 Short Breaks a mechanical or electronic medium, in typewriters, 40 Creed Trainer Key computer printers, even in early photo-typesetters. 42 Readers’ Advertisements Were you to include applications where the printed 43 Your Letters is ‘rasterised’ — image transmitted and reproduced 48 US Subscriptions via as a pattern of dots, rather than in ‘solid’ characters Wise Owl — even television, video and modern printers of the laser and ink~jet varieties could be said to owe something of their existence to that same idea. And where did our back-cover illustration errtllsement come from? A book published 99 years ago. ntfex Truly amazing! I CG VW’M EH; 23 G4ZPY Keys 42 G-QRP Club 42 FISTS CW ,/ G3GSR Club MM33 — flpr‘if 1994 Mew

Operation Maquis 1994 (FSHJM), TMSOHA (FSIDA), Readers are reminded that over the week- TOSORC (Martinique) (FMSCW), end of 11—12 June 1994, special event ON4WAR (ON7YO), PA6JUN, stations in France, England, Belgium, GBZIWM (G4HXH), GX4ARE Holland and Martinique, will be on the (G4ARE), GBSHCR (or GOFSP/P) air to honour the memory of the radio (GOFSP), GX3YRG/P (G3OEP), operators who risked, and often suffered, GOJNP, G4NXN. death or torture while maintaining the On Sunday June 12, from 0630 UTC, clandestine radio links between France on 7.025MHz, a net will be activated in and England during WWII. communication with GBZIWM at the Many of the commemorative stations Imperial War Museum’s Duxford air- will be using low-power wartime equip- field. During these communications, ment on the 40m amateur band and stations on the continent (some using modern equipment will be used on other wartime equipment) will transmit in te- bands. All radio amateurs are invited to legraphy a sentence in French similar to contact them, and those using B2 or those sent by the BBC during WWII, other clandestine sets will be especially and the sentences will be sent back in welcome. English by GB2IWM. A diploma can The stations will be active mainly on be applied for by radio amateurs or these CW on the HF bands, but also in other SWLs who copy at least five of modes and with some limited operation sentences, together with the calls of the on VHF. Contacts will be confirmed stations which sent them. will by special QSL cards specific to each Additionally, station TMSOMA station, and special diplomas will be be activated from June 7 to 12 from a A further awarded as described below. different location each day. Stations (QSL managers in brackets) diploma will be available for amateurs SWLs who hear, this taking part will be: TMSOAM (FSSMR), who contact, and TMSOCA (F6HPX), TMSOCR station and report its different QRA (FSOZX), TMSOLF (FSMXH), locator on each day of operation. self— TMSOLR (F6DTU), TMSOMM For more information send a 1 and IRC to Jean- (F 1 NYO), TMSOND (F SIU), addressed envelope 5 chemin TMSORB (FlHNU), TMSOSO Jacques Legrand FSSMR, Mi 06560 (FSWA), TMSOVR (F6AXX), du Cambarnier, Villa Lou, TMSOYO (F3NV), TMSOBR Valbonne, France. in this (FSMYW), TMSOSM (F6IPS), (Reports from participants MM. TMSOMN (FSXX), TMSCD (F2FX), special event will be welcomed by TMSOMA (FSAM), TMSOHG — Ed.)

2 mm — flprif1994 Danish Liberation Celebrations hoc Morse committee, or its members, The Danish Freedom Fighter Museum are asked to contact MM immediately. station OZSMAY (see MM31, p.7) plans to be on the air on May 4, on 14.038, ZR0 Test 14.043 and 14.046MHz (i) to celebrate The ZRO Memorial Technical Achieve- the Danish liberation message. ment Program, otherwise known as the UK stations are particularly asked ‘ZR0 Test’, may be of interest to read- to stand—by for this station, for normal ers of MM. Basically, it is a series of QSOs and ‘chat’, because many WWII CW numeric code groups transmitted at resistance people come to the museum 10 wpm through the AMSAT—OSCAR- that day and like to see the station l3 amateur satellite with each succes- working. sive group transmitted at a lower power Torben Dahl, OZSABN, writes than the previous group. ‘please be patient when calling us as The participating listener monitors we are sometimes speaking to the visi- the downlink signals from the satellite tors and it is not possible to key at the until the numbers can no longer be cop- same time. There are also two short cer- ied. Those who can hear the beacon can emonies in the evening, at 1930 and qualify for the basic award by copying 2030, when we may have to shut down the code group heard at that level (des- for 10—15 minutes.’ ignated ‘ZO’). The challenge is to improve home- IARU Morse Committee station reception performance to a point A meeting of the Administrative Coun- where the lower-level downlink signals cil of the International Amateur Radio can also be copied. Endorsements, in Union was held in Brussels, Belgium, the form of attractive stickers to affix to 26—27 on September 1993. During this the basic certificate, record each succes— meeting, its chairman, IARU President sive level heard and accurately copied. Richard L. Baldwin WlRU, announced At the beginning of the run, uplink his intention to appoint several new power from the control station is set to ad hoc committees, including one to be match the general beacon downlink concerned with ‘Morse code: the issues, strength. This is level ‘ZO’. After send- and a proposed position’. ing and repeating the first random five— There is no further information at digit number at this level, the control this but the time, recommendations of operator lowers his uplink power by 3dB this committee could, potentially, have (half power) and repeats the procedure a considerable impact on the large with a new random number (level ‘21 ’). numbers of radio amateurs who still This continues through successive use Morse code around the world. stages to level ‘Z9’, 27dB below the MM will report any further news as beacon level, and a new level, ‘A’, is it becomes available. At the same time, —30dB. At the time of writing, only one readers having any knowledge or infor— station (Darrell Emerson AA7FV) has mation about the work of the IARU ad successfully copied level ‘A’.

9119163 — #7111994 The 27dB decrease from ‘ZO’ to ‘Z9’ QRP Convention & FUNRUN 1994 is the result of cutting output power in In conjunction with its 10th QRP half nine times. At the control station Convention, to be held on Sunday, May Ra— for Mode ‘B’ tests (two-metre down— 8 (see page 5), the Yeovil Amateur 1994. link), it is typically the difference be— dio Club is organising FUNRUN tween 25 watts out at 20 and 50mW Details are as follows: out at Z9 to a 13dB gain antenna. Stations: GBZLOW (at QTH of G3ICO), A typical test sequence resembles the G3CQR and GSGC (both QTHR). following: When: Monday, May 2 to Friday, May 00000 00000 00000 72518 72518 72518 6, 2000 to 2200 UK Clock Time 11111111111111194220 94220 94220 (UTC+1) each evening. 22222 22222 22222 31965 31965 31965 Frequencies: 3.560 and 7.030MHZ FR’. etc., etc., with the first three five—figure both ilOkHz. Call: ‘CQ Must be between QRP sta- groups of each line representing the Contacts: level number of the transmission. tions, max 5W output. Stations may be Tests are performed once or twice a worked once only on each band during stations month depending on satellite orientation the FUNRUN, but FUNRUN for and availability. T0 provide consistency (all operating each evening randomly between transmissions, the 25-minute one hour on each band) may be worked band. test sessions are scheduled for periods once each evening on each when the satellite is positioned for opti~ Scoring: Each QSO with another QRP Each with mum spacecraft antenna pointing angles station scores 10 points. QSO 20 Each with respect to all earthbound listeners. G3CQR or G3GC scores points. Announcements of the test schedules QSO with GB2LOW scores 50 points. each band will be the are made through the various AMSAT The score for information channels. total of the four best evenings. The over- A ZRO brochure containing the rules, all score will be the sum of these two. be marked and and reprints of various articles about the All duplicates must will be de- ZRO Tests in English, German and no points claimed. Points at twice Dutch, is obtainable for an s.a.s.e. (A5 ducted for unmarked duplicates size), with two units of postage, from the QSO value. Serial Number (see Andy MacAllister WASZIB, 14714 Exchange: RST, Number. KnightsWay Drive, Houston, TX 77083, below), Output Power, G-QRP serial USA. Serial Number: The 3-figure number He will also send such details of number should start at a random than 100, and forthcoming transmissions as are cur— of your choice not less be incremented by one for rently available, including the areas of must then the three Club the world covered by each transmission. each QSO. However, listed above will all (Information from Andy MacAllister FUNRUN stations in usual WA5ZIB, AMSAT Award Manager and commence at 001 the way. sheets for AMSAT Vice-President, User Opera- Entry Sheets: Separate log with sub-totals for each tions.) each band, M91433 — fllpn'f 1994 4 evening, preferably in RSGB format. laxed and friendly operating. This invi- Also a separate signed RSGB-style tation extends to operators of all abili- cover sheet stating output power, rig ties, ‘from the newest and most hesitant and aerial used. of new licensees to the high speed pad— Convention Entry: Bring your entries dle merchants who may care to return to to the Convention by 1 pm on Sunday, their roots and show they can still hand May 8. Certificates for the highest score pump with the rest’. on each band, the highest total overall Further information may be obtained score, and to the station consistently from the SKE organiser, John Bluff using the lowest power will be present— G3SJE, 52 Winchester Road, Kenton, ed during the afternoon. Harrow, Middx HA3 9PE, who will Postal Entry: Separate certificates will welcome reports and comments after be awarded to the top postal entries. the event. Logs should be sent to G3CQR, (Information from John Bluff 9 Quarr Drive, Sherborne, Dorset G3SJE. ) DT9 4HZ, by 17 May 1994. NB! There are 540 extra points to be IRA Morse Transmissions won by working the three FUNRUN sta- According to CQ-TF, the IRA (Iceland’s tions on each band each evening. Good national radio society) is now ‘sending luck and have fun! QTC’ on 3.579MHz at 18302 daily. These transmissions are also meant to Straight Key Evening aid those learning the Morse code. The 13th annual SKE organised by the (Informationfrom Reynir H. Stefans- Edgware & District Radio Society will son, Reydaifirdi, Iceland.) be held on Friday, 20 May 1994. Time: from around l900hrs EST ‘for as World QRP Day long as you like’. June 17 is designated annually by the Band: 3.5MHz, particularly around International Amateur Radio Union as 3.550MHz. World QRP Day. This is not a contest. Call: CQ SKE. Special Event Club Sta- The idea is simply to try working with tion GB2SKE will be operational in the low power. evening on 3.5MHZ and in the afternoon Many QRP stations will be heard us- on 7.0MHz, making it a straight key ing typical power levels from 5 watts afternoon also. output down to milliwatts. High power The E&DRS normal Club Station, stations are asked to avoid interference GX3ASR/P, will also be on the air to these QRP stations — or better still, to during the evening and, to encourage reduce power themselves and join in Novice participation, one of the two club the fun! stations will operate above 3.560MHz. SKE is not a contest. Its purpose is For Your Diary to encourage everyone to plug in their YEOVIL: QRP Convention, doors straight keys and indulge in some re- open 9am, Sunday, May 8, at the Min/B3 — aprit 1994 5 Preston Centre, Monks Dale, Yeovil, Exhibition & Rally will be held at Somerset. Talks on ‘Low-angle the Springfields Exhibition Centre, Propagation’, ‘Converting TXs into Spalding, Lines on Sunday, June 5, Transceivers’, Variable Frequency from 10.30am. Crystal & Ceramic Resonator Oscilla- FAREHAM: The RNARS Annual tors’, ‘A National Radio Society’. Mobile Rally will be held on the Sports Displays of home—madeQRP equipment, Field at HMS Collingwood, Fareham, vintage radio equipment. Trade stands Hants, on Sunday,June 12, from 10am orientated to QRP components, etc. See to 5pm. The venue is located on the also FUNRUN details above. GBZLOW B3385 Fareham — Lee-on—Solent road. talk-in on $22. Admission £1.50. LONGLEAT: The 1994 Longleat BIRMINGHAM: The National Vin- Amateur Radio Rally will be held at tage Communications Fair, 10.30am its usual site in the grounds of Longleat — 5pm, Sunday, May 15 in the Pavil— House, near Warminster, Wilts, on ions Hall at the National Exhibition Sunday, June 26, commencing at Centre. Hundreds of stalls selling vin- lOam. tage radio, TV, audio, gramophones and STAFFORD: Hamfest-UK will be held records, telephones, telegraph equip- at the County Showground, Weston ment, magazines and books, etc. Plus Road, Stafford, on Saturday and collectors‘ clubs. Admission £3. Sunday, July 2 and 3, from 10am to SOUTHSEA: The organisers promise 5pm. a strong radio communications interest WIMBORNE: The Flight Refuelling at the D-Day 50th Military Vehicle ARS are staging Hamfest ’94 at the Show (over 1200 vehicles expected) to FR Sports and Social Club, Merley, be staged on Southsea Common, Hants, Wimborne, Dorset, on Sunday, August over the May Bank Holiday weekend 14, from 10am to 5pm. Saturday — Monday, May 28—30 Morsum Magnificat/Radio Bygones inclusive. will be in attendance at each of the SPALDING: An Amateur Radio above shows.

Send £3 or a US$5 bill LNEZ’E gl/[orsum Radio for a sample issue Magm’ficat Bygones The Language of Maritime WfT In the April/May 1994 issue. out now! More Transmitting Plates The Theremin 0 The Bigrid Valve Home-Brew The Mighty RGD 1050C plus all the regulars! Bendix MN-26 Radio Compass BACK ISSUES — Limited stocks of issues Photo-feature: Eastern Bloc Military Radio Nos. 20, 21, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31 & 32 ONLY G C Arnold 9 Wetherby Close, now available, Partners, at £2.20 each to UK addresses, Broadstone, Dorset BH18 8J8, England £2.25 overseas (surface mail) Phone/FAX: 0202 658474

mafia — apn'I1994 NE BIG ADVANTAGE for their telegraphic communications. to a non-alphabetized writ- US Navy operators who were attached ten ‘symbol’ language is that to SACO (Sino-American Cooperative irrespective of the limitations of widely Organisation) during WWII recall that different spoken dialects, communication the Chinese used the foregoing system is quite effective. A Chinese whose spo- over telephone circuits (wire and radio) ken language is only Mandarin may not by vocally spelling out the dictionary be able to orally numbers in ‘dits’ communicate with and ‘dahs’. another Chinese Even though who speaks only Chinese Dit-Dahs two speakers with Cantonese. But if different dialects by Don deNeuf WA 1SPM (SK) both are literate they could not under- can communicate stand each other, the with ease through voiced ‘dits’ and the written Chinese characters which are ‘dahs’ required them only to have one of really the equivalent of pictures. the dictionaries at hand and to know the When the Danish Great Northern International Morse code for the numer- Company introduced the Telegraph in als zero through nine (‘di—di-di-di-dah China at the turn of the century it was being the numeral 4, etc.). well aware that a Morse code to accom- This was far better than trying to modate some six thousand ideographs was stumble through some foreign language simply impractical.To overcome this, the translation full of difficult accents. I re- so-called ‘ChineseTelegraph Dictionary’ member one triple conversion test we ran was devised which provided a system using the phrase ‘Out of sight — Out of involving a series of four digit Arabic mind’. It came back as ‘Blind Idiot’.MM numerals assigned to the 0073 0044 0040 0024 0022 0021 0021 0000 various ideographs. 5907 1704 8764 1937 7874 0073 Although somewhat 00210000 £12 a? if? time consuming to find the 9! $ E E ‘5‘ 5922 2455 7773 BE required numbers in com- 0050 454? 0026 13:9 0317: 7:? posing a message (and to ‘ E m fi them 1'. 5924 0588 0781 1579 5856 729s ‘unpack’ when re_ 6E am "75 TE 5%. 5": 1] ceived), it was perfectly fl 3 4: E: workable and the 5923 1593 5035 1690 61% Chinese 7:3 0043 0023 00§1 immediately adopted it g B if 5 fl 3: fig 1150 0075 1593 6366 4547 5:305 0071 0339 ff.- 1% as 2‘ is a a Excerpt fromapage of the 5946 0072 0794 7529 7621 W 0044 0029 _43:39 ‘Chinese Telegraph Dictionary’ [if P3? 51 5%“ i E M0433 — apnf 1994 HE FIRST TIME I SAW PARIS bomb craters. Alencon, Chartres, Ram- was in the simmering, high sum- bouillet, Versailles... mer afternoon heat of Sunday, Paris itself seemed almost un- 27 August 1944. Our two-jeep convoy, touched... a splatter of vicious marks that had left Juaye in Normandy early from rifle-fire or grenades, the occasional that morning, sped past the armoured burnt-out tanks and overturned vehicles column of the French Leclerc division still forming now-deserted barricades. drawn up under Those waving the trees along the smiling crowds fed boulevards; they one with the sense had had enough The First Time that we were wit- that fuel to reach the I nessing history city, but not farther. Saw Paris week-end. Paris From well be— Life as a wartime radio operator for was not the only yond Versailles, it Special Communicationssometimes capital city to have had become a regal offered more than just key pounding. been occupied for procession; crowds Pat Hawker G3VA recalls one very four long years by in Sunday best out- special occasion when he witnessed the enemy, but it side the cafes, wav- history in the making was the one that ing and cheering symbolised most this token arrival of strongly the Ger- British uniforms, photographed, shaken man domination of Europe that Hitler by the hand, kissed by the girls on that had boasted would last a 1000 years. first heady Sunday of Liberation. To avoid the continuing battles of Missing Operators the Falaise ‘gap’, we had swung in a Paris had reason to celebrate; here wide arc south—westthrough the battered none of the wanton destruction of and totally destroyed Normandy villag- Warsaw. The citizens in rising against es of Flers, Villers and Conde back in the Grey Mice (the French term for the the bocage countryside where the un— Occupation troops) could rightly take a mistakable sweet smell of death hung share in the credit. Few who experienced heavy in the air. the welcomes of Liberation will ever forget them, though it was soon to be- Convoluted Wreckage come obvious, in the ferocious and score— Then fast along the straight poplar— paying ‘epuration’ (cleansing) in which lined avenues of a countryside unmarked thousands died, that the scars of occupa— by war until we came to the tangled tion run deep and ugly. remains of the railyards outside Paris Our first stop was at the Hotel de where every square foot was littered with Ville to deliver an urgent, overdue, mes- convoluted wreckage and pitted with sage for Charles de Gaulle. My brief, 8 M9133 — apnf 1994 however, was to find out what had hap- nised an urgent need to jump on the pened to the two radio operators with Allied bandwagon. our ‘Eskimo Nell’ signals vehicle that had left Juaye a few days before and Military Euphoria whose 30-watt MkIII (6V6co-807pa) That Monday, General Montgomery, radio transmitter had remained inex- ever anxious to be one step ahead of the plicably silent during every subsequent Americans in public esteem, had told sked (schedule). If they had come on air, the war correspondents: ‘The end of the as expected, that diplomatic message for war is in sight... any enemy units that de Gaulle would have manage to get away gone by radio, and I from the Normandy would have lingered pocket (Falaise gap) for days at Juaye. will not beinafit con- dition to fight again Snafu or Fubar for months’. It was a typical How fatal it was ‘snafu’ — that then to underestimate the vogue GI expression staying powers of the for ‘situation normal German army and so all fouled up’ (or create the military ’ words to that effect). euphoria that led di- The author (right) and another SCU One had learned by rectly to the ‘bridge then that most Secret operator at Brussels, June 1945 too far’ disaster of Service operations Arnhem in Septem~ tend to fall into one of two categories; ber’s ‘Operation Market Garden’. ‘snafu’ or ‘fubar’ — ‘fouled up beyond By the Wednesday, Radio France all recognition’. (Algiers) was breathlessly announcing On Monday, 21 August 1944, The that Paris had been liberated from with- Times carried a promising story that the in. ‘Paris is again a free city’ thundered Americans, following their dramatic The Times the following morning. break-out from Brittany, were near Paris The BBC was similarly premature and announced that there had been a and had caused our intelligence ‘revolt in Paris’. ‘masters’ to despatch a party with in- German sources admitted that ‘irre- structions to make their way to the city. sponsible elements in Paris have taken up arms’ and the curfew had been Changed Headlines extended from 9 pm to 7 am. In fact, the But Algiers was wrong, or playing prime mover in this ‘revolt’ was not some devious game. By the Friday organised Resistance but the French morning the headlines had changed police who, with exceptions, had until dramatically. then done little to support the under— No longer was Paris free but engaged ground fighters but now clearly recog— in ‘a desperate fight’ with the insurgents 91491133 — flpr‘if 1994 9 F2WL

Lorain

The Whaddon Mlei/2 Pierre

-- transmitter/receiver in use with its . . inbuilt miniature ‘silent’ Morse key, and Courtesy (facingpage) the set’s circuit arrangement facing defeat. ‘The French patriots are Americans and Leclerc’s column that fighting an unequal battle against the had been chosen for political reasons to Germans in Paris, and the allied forces head the advance on Paris. endeavouring to link up with them are There was a further reason; many of still some miles from the city... The the Germans had becomedeeply attached French fighters are in terrible danger... to the city they had occupied in comfort. The Germans have material superior— They were more than willing to ignore ity... history on a tremendous scale is Hitler’s orders to hold on to the city at being made in those few square miles of all costs. France’, as The Times put it. Did the Resistance liberate Paris from Seldom, even in wartime, had the within? The answer must be both yes, press been made to change its words so and no. A secret Armistice was signed quickly. late on Friday.

Passage Blocked Celebrations My friends in the small advance par- Saturday and Sunday the Parisians Leclerc’s ty had expected an easy journey into celebrated, welcoming not only uni— Paris. Their passage was firmly Frenchmen but anybody in Allied blocked... but there were secret negoti- form. They believed that THEY had ations going on in the city; the Germans driven out the Germans and were anx— recognised that they would be unable to ious to establish their own part in the defend the city against the advancing Liberation. 10 mm — aprit 1994 UM—I

“ll-

AERIAL BUL

World

Wireless

lnl IUI

Courtesy

REGENERATION (REACTION)

The ‘underground’, the swelling Radio contact had finally been made ‘French Forces of the Interior’ (FFI) and on the Sunday but too late. The senior those who had genuinely worked for the NCO was soon ordered back to Norman- Intelligence reseaux and the ‘escape dy. GM3AVA, more happily, going for- lines’, were soon to be swamped by the ward to Brussels, then on into Holland. ‘September resistors’. In Paris, several MkIIIs, and a 150- My two colleagues, I discovered, had watt MkX (813pa) transmitter, together finally got into Paris on the Saturday with a clutch of HRO receivers were and were immediately caught up in the installed in our comfortable ‘home’ in celebrations. the plushy XVIth arrondissement and Who thinks of radio skeds at such a links with Whaddon, Juaye and then time? THEY did not know of the mes- Brussels were soon busy handling ci- sage for de Gaulle that was causing so pher traffic. much embarrassment in Juaye! One of them, incidentally, (Watson Peat CBE, Assassination Attempts GM3AVA) was a Governor of the BBC That first Saturday, de Gaulle in the 19803! marched steadfastly through Paris, his The other, a former rum-runner tall angular frame remaining erect when radioman from the American prohibi- rifle fire rang out opposite the Louvre tion era, finished the war in a military and again as he strode up the steps of ‘glasshouse’ for black-marketing in Notre Dame. Brussels. A fortnight later, on September 10,

M9133 — apriI1994 11 another attempt was made to assassinate self what a military sham I was — a him while speaking at the Trocadero ‘special duties’ toy soldier who had never when an unknown marksman fired on fired his Sten in anger, had not even him from the Eiffel Tower. received basic military training, and That afternoon, finding the tower re— was being paid adequately. opened for the very first time, and un- In the ‘racket’ we had done what the daunted by the ‘non marche pas’ of the French often accuse the British of doing lifts, I was painstakingly climbing the — fighting bravely to the last Frenchman narrow spiral iron staircase towards the working the clandestine radios!

An SCU9 station at Eindhoven, late 1944. Equipment includes HRO receiver, SCU Mklll (6V6-807) transmitter and (atop the HBO) the MkVIl/2 (‘Paraset') agent transmitter-receiver (see previous page)

first platform when a young Frenchman Support for ‘Sussex’ came rushing down. I had come to Normandy to provide Politely, I squeezed aside, little guess- support services for a secret British/ ing then that he must have been the American/French intelligence operation would-be assassin. called ‘Sussex’ which had been set up to place 50 two-man teams in a wide Night-Fire sweep from Brittany to the Belgian bor- Paris, as ever, was not like other cit- der to report enemy troop movements ies. At night the rooftops continued to by radio, using Frenchmen recruited echo with the sound of rifle fire, as col- in Algeria by the redoubtable ‘Remy’ laborators and the milice (police collab— (Gilbert Renault-Roulier of the French orators) made final efforts to help their film industry). friends. In 1941412, Remy had organised ef— I found it necessary to remind my- fective France—UK radio links for his 12 9mm — ,qpnf1994 CND intelligence group working on parade of American troops marching behalf of de Gaulle. perhaps twenty or more abreast, military The teams were originally meant to vehicles interspersed by half-a-dozen operate independently of the Resistance French military bands, coming from the and Intelligencenetworks, some of which Etoile, clearly conceived as a Victory were known to have been penetrated. It Parade. was also a concession to the Americans Absent from the parade were any who had been demanding the right to British or French troops and, when re- put agents into France. ports of the parade began to appear in Each team comprised an organiser the British press, a row soon blew up and a radio-operator equipped with the with harsh criticism of American polit- low-power, battery-operated, MkXXI ical insensitivity. (3S4pa) transmitter‘receiver and ‘Ascen- This had the curious result that the sion’ Rfl" equipment to speak to an parade was soon declared never to have aircraft with wire—recorder. happened! Had our eyes deceived us? To ‘lie Exploration like a communiqué’ is a phrase almost By Tuesday, August 29, another as well-known as that the first casualty radio operator (the late John Bowers of war is truth! G4NY had arrived. Together we decid- The authorities insisted that there had ed to explorecentral Paris although, since been no parade, only a few American the Metro was still not running, this in- troops passing through Paris on their way volved a long walk to the Trocadero, the to the Front! Etoile and then down the Champs Apparently we had witnessed the Elysees. The wide boulevards, the state- most curious advance into battle of ly squares and the neat parks were virtu- World War II. But I notice with the pass- ally untouched by the fighting except ing of years that photographs of that for the pock marks of small-arms fire. parade continue to be published, usually The department stores along the without caption. Boulevard Hausseman, the fashionable In the Champs that afternoon some gift shops, the modists of the Rue de Frenchmen, noticing the absence of Rivoli and the Rue de la Paix were all British uniforms from the parade, insist- soon displaying luxury goods virtually ed on Johnny Bowers and myself ad- unknown in wartime Britain. Only the journing to a nearby cafe. Vive l ’entente food shops were empty. cordiale! The weekend euphoria had subsided but the people seemed genuinely glad to N0 Buses see British uniforms. In those early days of the Liberation, this was still a Paris without buses, with- Parade that Never Was out the Metro, with electricity switched Returning to the Champs Elysees, on only fitfully. Bicycles were in vogue, we were surprised to see an enormous including bicycle—taxis. Civilian cars, {Mm/£33 — apn‘t1994 13 many taken over by the FFI, trailed ‘gaz in any way denigrating the work of these du bois’ wood burning stoves that helped people, the reality was very different. to relieve petrol shortages in France dur- It was the extreme left-wing, the ing the occupation. We depended on Communist-led FTP, who from 1941 our Onan petrol—electric generators. onwards provided the most active and When the Metro finally reopened on most ruthless Resistance. some routes on September 11, we be- They had already experience of came almost the centre of a riot when clandestine organisation and had the sup-

The 088 suitcase sel developed from information supplied by SOE on (he A-2. It comprises the SSH-i-G receiver, SST-1-E sender and SSP-1-D power supply

we attempted to buy tickets. For four port of tough veterans of the Spanish into France years the ‘Grey Mice’ had not used tick- Civil War who had escaped ets. Parisians were determined that the in 1939. Whereas London frequently Allied troops should fare no worse. urged the Resistance to prepare, but wait, for the opening of the Second Front, The FTP Moscow called upon its supporters Most people associate ‘French everywhere to engage in active resist- Resistance’ with the Free French sup- ance, regardless of the consequences. — and in turn porters of General de Gaulle and the The FTP mistrusted — both de Gaulle agents sent in by ‘F’ section of the were mistrusted by Special Operations Executive. Without and the British. 14 Mama — fllprif1994 In the aftermath of the Paris Libera- Vichy Collaboration tion, two fears brought the Foreign At Vichy, Laval argued in favour of Office closer to de Gaulle’s provisional Close collaboration with the Germans, government; fear of a power grab by the convinced of their ultimate victory. FTP; and fear of an incursion into Spain In the succeeding years, Vichy fol- by the Civil War veterans to attack lowed a strongly anti-Semitic, anti- Franco. Communist line — and aided the Ger- mans by hunting downthose prepared to Politics ofthe Resistance act on behalf of de Gaulle. To understand the confused situation The French ‘special services’, equiv— in Paris and France during and immedi- alent to our MI—5 and MI-6 (SIS) contin- ately after the occupation demands some ued to operate undercover on behalf of appreciation of the tortuous politics of Vichy in both the occupied and non- what may loosely be called the Resist- occupied (ZNO) zones, as the Bureau ance. des Menees Antinationales (BMA) and These had evolved in a unique the Enterprise General de Travaux manner as a result of the existence of a Ruraux (TR). ‘legal’ Vichy government. ‘Free France’, They were under Colonel Rivet who grouped around the proud figure of de obtained Vichy agreement that certain Gaulle, had emerged only slowly and categories of Intelligence, including painfully. Gustav Bertrand’s important signal Paradoxically, in view of later events, intelligence, could secretly be passed to de Gaulle in the early years drew most the British by radio and other means. support from those whose politics were SIS drew heavily on these sources, with left of centre. Most of those to the right their connections with the Inter-Allied, at first supported Marshal Petain, backed Alliance and their own Jade intelligence by the French armed forces. networks working in France on behalf Petain was not an Anglophobe. In of the Allies independently of the Free 1940 he made several secret diplomatic French movement or SOE ‘F’ Section. overtures to the British government, both With so many conflicting interests by emissaries and through the Canadian and mixed loyalties, it is perhaps not and American diplomats who remained surprising that Churchill was later to in Vichy. express the opinion that of all the war— The French army and the French time crosses he carried the Cross of air force also sought to aid their former Lorraine was the heaviest. allies.

' French naval officers, with some no— This article has been adapted table exceptions, were hostile to from one'tlzat.appearedif: the Britain after Mers—el-Kebir, the attack ' IBA .. Newsletterin 1984, to by the Royal Navy on the French fleet 'mark the 40th anniversaryof off Oran in 1940 July that resulted in the Liberation ofParis. . heavy loss of French lives.

{MM} — apnf1994 15 HERE DOES OUR standard The Mathematical definition of Morse speed come Theory of Commun- from? In the ARRL Handbook ication. This founded of In- we read, ‘Ten dots per second equals the discipline carefully 24 words per minute’. This comes from formation Theory. They and a table an old telegraphy convention of the last analysed English text gave the proba— century that a showing ‘standard five letter bility of occurrence of all characters. word plus a space’ was 48 ‘dot-time’ WORDS, Average Four units long. (A ‘dot’ Words, Words... is TWO ‘dot-time’ They simply Dr Gary Bold ZL1AN counted how units — the ‘mark’ by many each charac- and the ‘space’). times to send at 12 words in ‘PARIS’, fol- if a keyer is set up ter occurred minute dots second) and ‘standard lowed by the ‘5 per (10 per pieces of is for five minutes, and divid- dot-time‘ word- English text sent English’, one will expect, on average, to send 60 ed the total for each space used by te— words, but will always get more like 70 character by the legraphists, was words! Bold discusses this total. Here exactly this long Gary grand and, implication, first few and could be sent phenomenon by are the en- concludes that if the 'average word’ tries in their table: repeatedly for a to Morse speed had minute to estimate used measure defined in terms of tour standard 0.2 sending speed. been Wordspace rather than live there wouldbe 0105 However, the ‘7 letters E between our dot—time’ word— almost perfect agreement T 0072 definitionof Morse speed and what 0.0654 Space is now de— 0 actually happenS- A 0.063 fined by the ARRL. Hence ‘PARIS’ This that becomes 50 units means fifth character (the re- long. To send at 24 wpm requires 24 on average every will be so times 50 over 60 units per second; or ciprocal of 0.2) a wordspace, words four characters long 20 units per second, or 10 dots per average are in The commonest second, as defined. (not five as PARIS). in What is intriguing is that ‘PARIS’ letter, E, occurs about once every The least common is NOT the same length as an average ten, and so on. occurred about once word in written or spoken English. This letters, J, Q, and Z, in thousand. is easy to check. In 1949, Claude every know whether MY Shannon and Warren Weaver published I was interested to had the probabilities, sol wrote an enormously influential book called text same Mat/[33 — 1994 16 apnt a basic program to analyse all the of symbols would result in a faster ‘Morseman’ columns written so far. The Morse code! probabilities were very similar except that my words average between 3.99 and Faster Code Possible 4.32 letters long, with an overall aver— I added to my spreadsheet to check age of4.17. I must use obscure words. this out and found that it is indeed pos- sible to design a faster Morse code but They Got it Right it is, in fact, only 5.3 per cent faster. Interestingly, Samuel Morse and The reason for this is that space, E, T, Alfred Vail were quite aware that and A, account for 40 per cent of all letters some were more common than characters between them and if you others, and in issue number 4 of MM get these right a few bad choices in (p.22) there is a photograph of what is the assignment of the rest make hardly effectively a probability table in long— any difference! Not worth it. We can hand compiled by Morse, which he and breathe again. American Morse, how- Vail used to assign American Morse ever, is perceptibly faster by 21 per cent. symbols to letters. To see how their A question remains. Both ‘0’ and probabilities compared with those of ‘R’ had to have their American codings Shannon and Weaver, I constructed a changed anyway. WHY did Gerke spreadsheet. It turns out that the proba- assign a LONGER symbol to ‘0’ than bilities are, again, almost identical! to ‘R‘? ‘O’ is about 20 per cent more So Morse got it right. Apparently he common than ‘R’ in English. Is ‘0’ wanted all letters to be a maximum of less common in German than in 10 dot-time units long, and this is the English, or did he just get it wrong? reason for the strange ‘dots with embed- (Remember, these probabilities are ded spaces’ codings of American Morse. language dependent.) However, these were rationalised by an Can anyone with a probability table Austrian (Gerke, see MM19, 17.6. — Ed. ). for German text enlighten me? And For example, the American Morse cod— why was ‘PARIS’ defined as the ing for ‘0’, two spaced dits (or e e), was ‘standard word’? Any ex-telegraphers changed to three dahs. This has led to an know? anomaly, since ‘0’, on the average, is (From ‘The Morsenzan ’, Gary Bold ’s the third most common letter in English regular column in Break-In, journal of yet it now has a much longer coding NZART, December, 1987.) than T, A, N and I, which are roughly as probable. If we were starting from scratch, we More wise words and thought- would assign ‘0’ the Morse symbol for provoking discussion from the ‘I’ and rearrange some others as well. pen of Dr Gary Bold will be (Fortunately, nobody contemplates do— appearing in future issues ing this.) This raises the intriguing of MM possibility that a ‘better’ assignment M983 — apn‘t1994 17 N 1843, WITH FUNDS EX— Washington to Baltimore which was to HAUSTED, Samuel F.B. Morse be built with the money from Congress. petitioned Congress for a second time, and waited two months in Wash- Challenging Task ington for a bill to be approved to allo- Morse was 52 years old. Behind him cate $30 000 for tests to evaluate the were years of disappointment, frustration merits of his electro-magnetic telegraph. and poverty. Ahead of him was the con- On the last day struction of a 40- of the session, 3 mile telegraph line March 1843, disap- What Hath God along the railroad pointment seemed from Washington inevitable. Any to Baltimore. This business not com- Wrought! - challenging task tech- pleted before the ad— The First Inter-city Telegraph would require journment could be Message niques, equipment and materials which, delayed for up to a Smith by Tony in did year and, as evening some cases, approached, senat- 24 May 1994, will be celebrated in the not yet exist. orial friends told United States as the 150th anniversary of Morse was him they thought the first inter-cityMorse telegraph message. appointed Superin- the bill would not On that date in 1844, using the newly tendent of Tele- Morse code and the a salary go through. In the devised American very graphs at depths of despair first hand key, Samuel Morse and Alfred of around $2000 he returned to his Vail publiclydemonstrated that Morse a year. Professors Gale room and made telegraphy was a practicable means of Fisher and arrangements [0 communication. This article describes the were assistant su- leave Washington trials and tribulations leading up to, the perintendents at the next day. success of, and the events following, $1500, and Alfred At breakfast 24 May 1844. It was the beginning of the Vail an assistant next morning he great telecommunications revolution. superintendent at Gale and was interrupted by The world would not be the same again $1000. Annie Ellsworth, Vail were two of in daughter of an old Morse’s partners friend, the Commissioner for Patents, the project. who told him that the bill had been Fisher, who had helped with earlier the passed unopposed just before the ad- experiments, was to supervise man- its insulation journment at midnight. He could hardly ufacture of the wire, and Gale’s sci- speak at first, and when he did he prom— and insertion into lead pipes. ised her that she should choose the words entific knowledge was to be placed at for the first dispatch on the line from the disposal of the project whenever

— 1994 18 Mafia flprif required, and Vail was to be responsible Morse had planned the underground for the instruments and setting them up, line believing that Cooke and Wheat- as outlined in the following agreement stone’s system in England had success- which he signed on March 21: fully used buried conductors. After nine miles had been laid, however, it was ‘PROFESSOR MORSE, — As an as— found that the pipe-encased wire had sistant in the telegraphic experiment faulty insulation caused by heat in the contemplated by the Act of Con— manufacturing process. gress lately passed, I can superin— In order not to reveal this problem tend and procure the making of the publicly, work was stopped by Cornell Instruments complete according to ‘accidentally’breaking the trench plough your direction, namely: the regis— against a rock in the ground, thus giving ters, the correspondents with their time for a solution to be sought. Profes— magnets, the batteries, the reels, and sor Fisher, responsible for supervising the paper, and will attend to the pro- manufacture, and for testing the finished curing of the acids, the ink, and the cable, was dismissed and at the same preparation of the various stations. I time Gale resigned due to ill—health. will assist in filling the tubes with wire, and the resinous coating, and I Overhead Wires will devote my whole time and at— With just himself and Alfred Vail tention to the business so as to se- left to superintend the work, and $23 000 cure a favorable result, and should of the $30 000 allocation spent, Morse you wish to devolve upon me any was in despair. Vail chose this moment other business connected with the to ask for a $250 raise in salary and telegraph, I will cheerfully under— confided to his diary, ‘1 am at a loss to take it. decide whether or not to remain in the ‘Three dollars per diem, with trav- employ of the government... I fear if elling expenses, I shall deem a sat- the appropriation is spent without a isfactory salary. trial, that utter disgrace will follow all ‘Very respectfully, your ob’t ser’t, concerned.’ ALFRED VAIL’ Vail and Cornell urgently read all the literature they could find about the Cable Failure European telegraphs and discovered that Superintending the trenching for a the English underground wires had also contractor was Ezra Cornell, later found- been a failure and had been replaced by and chief er benefactor of Cornell Uni- overhead wires on poles. Cornell was versity. He is reputed to have invented then appointed as a mechanical assistant the plough, pulled by eight mules, which to Morse at $1000 a year, taking respon- the dug trench, laid the cable and filled sibility for constructing the line, and his the trench all in again, one operation. He enthusiasm, energy and ability became a able was to lay the line so quickly the major factor in its final completion. wire-makers could not keep up with him. By April 1844, poles 24ft high, 200ft mafia — apnf 1994 19 1847

published

1845,

Vail,

Alfred

by

Telegraph

Magnetic

Electro

American

line — and used on the first between THE 1844 INSTRUMENTS Morse register key as the is located between the roll and Washington and Baltimore. Alfred Vail‘s first hand key paper of left. in 1845 terminology, V and the register mechanism. A clearer view of the key is shown top to a brass spring, 9. Description V is the platform. 8 is a metallic anvil and 7 a metallic hammer attached at the distant Vail wrote, ‘The key or correspondent is used for writing upon the register table’ (i.e. baseboard). From from station, and both it and the register are usually upon the same to ‘correspondent’ (i. e. sending this description it appears that the term ‘key', as an alternative of the conventional hand key Illustrations instrument), may have been used from the time this predecessor appeared in 1844 nominations for pres— were extending along the railroad. of the convention’s apart flashed to Good was again being made, ident and vice-president were progress the train bear- with Morse telegraphing his assistants Washington an hour before the giving an and receiving replies ‘within seconds’. ing the news reached city, of the potential of The insulation of the overhead wires early demonstration where they were attached to the poles the new telegraph. caused problems, but Cornell devised an economic solution using readily availa- Things Went Well Today the before the Whig conven— ble glass doorknobs. On day to Vail, ‘Get every- On May 1, the wires reached Annap- tion Morse wrote When olis Junction, 22 miles from Washing- thing ready in the morning... you the of the candidate see if ton, in time to pick up news from the learn name it to before the railway of the proceedings of the Whig you cannot give me... national convention at Baltimore. News (rail)cars leave you...’ 1994 20 mm _ apnr Next day, he wrote, ‘Things went Incredulous well Your today. last writing (i.e., send- Two days after the demonstration, ing. — Ed.) was good. You did not cor- on May 26, the Democratic convention rect your error of running your letters met in Baltimore and Morse was able to until de— together some time. Better be relay news direct from the convention to liberate... I may have some of the Cabi— Washington. Vail and Cornell had their net tomorrow... Get from the passengers instruments at the railway station in Bal- in the cars from Baltimore, or elsewhere, timore, while Morse was in a room be- all the news you can transmit. low the Senate chamber in Washington. There still were difficulties with the There were nine ballots for the presi- new hand keying technique and again he dential nomination, all reported instant- wrote to Vail, ‘Make a longer space be- ly by Vail. Excitement rose to a tween each letter and a still longer space crescendo in Washington as the news between each word.’ Finally, with eve— came into Morse’s office and a little- under ryone working great pressure, the known outsider, James K. Polk, finally line from Washington to Baltimore was received the almost unanimous support completed within the congressional al- of the convention for his candidature. location and, on 24 May 1844, all was The same procedure followed the for the ready first official demonstration vice—presidential nomination, but this of Morse’s invention. time the nominee, Senator Silas Wright was not at the convention, but in What Hath God Wrought! Washington. Vail telegraphed details to Invited observers gathered in the Morse who passed them to the senator. chamber the of United States Supreme Wright declined the nomination and Court. Morse his kept promise to Annie asked Morse to send his decision to an Ellsworth, and she chose the first words incredulous convention which received to be transmitted, the phrase ‘What hath his reply only minutes after nomination. God wroughtl’, taken from the Old Testament, Numbers, ch23, v.23. First Conference by Wire A contemporary account, in the Jour- They telegraphed again, received the nal of Commerce, records that Morse same reply and, unsure of the accuracy transmitted the let— sentence, ‘letter for of the new telegraph, sent a delegation ter in one minute’, to Alfred Vail in by train to Washington to make sure Baltimore, ‘and the same sentence was they had received the message correctly. again received from Baltimore in anoth- In Baltimore, having received con- er minute... Nothing could have been firmation of the accuracy of the mes— more appropriate than this devout excla- sage, a committee of the conference sat mation at such an when event, an inven- with Vail at his instrument while Wright tion which creates such wonder, and joined Morse in Washington in private about which there has been so much session. Via the new telegraph, the scepticism, is taken from the land of committee told Wright the reasons why visions, and becomes a reality...’ he should accept the vice~presidential 91191133 — 1994 apnf 21 nomination. In return he explained his Sfiort fireaks reasons for declining and this first long- distance telegraphic conference contin- and Context ued until the committee was finally Testing situations, unless the text convinced that Wright would not accept. Under normal is coded, the receiving operator expects The operator Lines Across America. it to make sense. expert correct minor spelling With a practical Morse telegraph in will normally he Sometimes in operation and carrying traffic daily, the errors, etc., as goes. code the tester immediate plan was to extend the line to testing for proficiency miss-spellings, etc. New York and Boston, using a single resorts to purposeful is in order here; wire and earth return instead of the me— A serious question test? The less skilled tallic circuit (double line) used so far. is this a legitimate be ‘thrown’ by the irregu- Morse wanted the government to take are likely to de— the skilled will overlook it; control of the system and its future larity, while if the tester is using it as a criterion of velopment, believing it far too impor- so he be making a serious tant to be left in the hands of private proficiency may If he wants to check accuracy companies. mistake. identification a far superior Negotiations took place along these of character is send mixed text. lines, but finally all that Congress would way to Wm G. Pierpont NOHFF do was vote a further $8000 to support the line already built. Morse, Gale and A Round Trip with a Key Vail placed their business affairs in of 1943 I was a trainee the hands of Amos Kendall, former In the summer Gunner in the Fleet Air Postmaster-General, and in 1845, vari- Telegraphist/Air Arm. During a reconnaissance exercise ous private companies came into being and prompted by Stone- with plans to erect Morse lines across in a Lysander, into view, I composed America. henge coming transmit a dummy sight- Soon the wires and facilities of the and started to of aircraft—carrier surround- Morse telegraph would spread across ing report an fleet. North America and then around the ed by a protective at the same time, my pilot world, overtaking or replacing nearly all However, decided to salute the circle below by other contemporary systems. Annie above. So it was against Ellsworth’s choice of words was indeed looping—the-loop the forces of ‘G’ that I arm- appropriate. MM varying wrestled the key to deliver my message. I do not recall if the response includ- with the enlarged and ed the advice to ‘try sending This, article is deserved it. » foot’ but I probably adapted from material which other would believe that a Westland originally appeared if? .-MM_19,_ But, who ' ‘ could loop-the-loop? Spring’1991 ; Lysander Stan Garner G3WSL Mafia _ 541341994 22 G4ZPY PADDLE KEYS INTERNATIONAL 41 MILL DAM LANE, BURSCOUGH, ORMSKIRK, LANCS., ENGLAND L40 7TG TEL. (0704) 894299 Long have users of Single Lever Keys asked us to produce a combo for them. Now we’ve done it and we think it’s the first one to be commercially made. THE NEW G4ZPY SINGLE LEVER COMBO Available in five different finishes, all with ‘key—down’ switches incorporated and with one little extra! If you get tired of using the Single Lever, and would like to change over to a Twin Lever, there is a jack socket fitted to enable another key to use the same Iambic Electronic Keyer.

The Single Lever Combo is just one of 17 further models which were added to our product range in February 1994 For information on all our Products, just send a 9” x 4" S.A.S.E. (GB), or 2 IRCs Overseas mm — npnf 1994 25 Shozucase

Featuring keys and other collectors’ items of telegraphic interest. If anyone can add to the information given please contact TS

4X1MH

Vi/ensky

Alex Modern Soviet key (German style), marked with Soviet Star and Russian text equivalent of Collection/Photo: MHTPand SSSH. ‘Feels good and is comfortable to operate.‘

4X1MH

Vilensky

KOB (key on base) combination Alex key and sounderset on Bakelite/ wood base, date unknown, by

E.F. Johnson Co, Waseca, Minn, Collection/Photo: and carrying the Johnson ‘Viking’ logo

Maviaa — 1994 24 aprit G3LLZ

Photo:

Heproduction Mac-Key, based on a 1938 originaland made by Dennis Goacher GsLLZ. This is the biggest project yet attempted by Dennis and comprises 1 12 separate parts

OEB

F1

Boumart

Dominique

Photo:

The latest creation from Francis Marinesco F6EOC. The lever is held down on two pivot pins by the tension of the spring and the adjustable stop near the anatomical/y shaped knob. Francis asks if readers of MM know of other keys made to a similar design? M9133 — flprif 1994 25 IR DOUGLAS MAWSON’s On 17 January 1912, the day Captain Australasian Antarctic Expedi- Scott’s ill-fated expedition reached the tion left Hobart on 11 Decem- South Pole, the first wireless tests were ber 191 1, to explore hitherto unsurveyed made on Macquarie and signals were areas of the Antarctic coastline. They satisfactorily received in another part of established Telefunken 1.5kW wireless the island. On February 2, Wellington, in stations on Macquarie Island in the South New Zealand was heard calling Suva, Pacific, some 850 Fiji, and three days miles from Hobart, later, as a taste of and in Adelie Land things to come, a in Antarctica. A Polar Radio, howling gale further station on brought the newly the Shackleton Ice 1912 Style erected aerial crash- 1500 miles ing down. Shelf, by Tony Smith to the west, was to After another the wind be equipped for re— two days, ceiving only. abated and it be- These were probably the earliest ex— came possible to climb the mast, re—erect wires. periments in polar radio communi— the aerial and tighten the stay cations, and the story of the installation On the 13th, contact was made with of these stations in a hostile environ- the SS Ulimaroa. The following night with three ment, and the struggle to establish and Sydney was worked together maintain communications, provides a more ships one of which, HMS Drake, fascinating picture of the state of radio sent useful time signals. in those times. News ofAmundsen First Tests On March 10, a two-way contact was The Macquarie Island station was made with Suva, 2400 miles away, and the located on a 300ft—high fiat-topped hill the next day news was received over successful expedi- with an open northerly aspect (towards air of Amundsen’s Australia) plus, it was hoped, a good tion to the South Pole. Many ships to ‘set-off’ south to Antarctica. The peaty the east of Australia were now calling the wet ground was expected to provide a at night, but with continuing gales in constant good earth, and the height of the hill aerial on Macquarie was allowed a shorter mast (90ft) than would danger of collapse, requiring frequent otherwise be required. The only appar- checking and adjustment of stay-lines. and ent disadvantage was the need to man— On April 1, it came down again handle the masts, petrol engine, induction a chain was substituted for the rope secured it to the generator, dynamo and other equipment which had previously The humidity was 93 per up the steep hill from the beach. mast. average 26 Mafia — apnf 1994 + SOUTH POLE was used to clear the site and to make Queen Mallikafi Land holes for the three 90ft Oregon pine ‘LShaickleton L snw’ masts. ) The masts were in sections, and were assembledaloft during many hours work, in 50—60 mph wind gusts, in tempera— Adelie Land tures below zero. It was August before ngGemgaV ”j Land the aerial could be hoisted between the k; three masts, when it was immediately blown down! By September all was ready. The en— gine and the dynamo turned, the note of the spark reached a crescendo and the . Macquarie I, operator, Walter Hannam, keyed a mes— sage to the world at large. Disappoint- ingly, the only was the crackle Tasmania response {> of atmospherics and after several days Q New Zealand ff! of this the only progress made was Australia the discovery that, during transmission, I sparks could be ‘drawn’ from metallic The area of the expedition objects in the hut! From a contemporary atlas Transmissions continued, still with— out reply, and on October 13 one of the masts broke in a gale. Since it was now cent, and much of the equipment had necessary to concentrate on the main to be shellacked for protection against purpose of the expedition, exploration excessive condensation. of the Antarctic coastline, the aerial was Weather reports Were sent nightly left down and all wireless experiments to Wellington, 1000 miles away. HMS ceased. Drake continued to send time signals and the Macquarie station eventually Missing Detector re-transmitted these to Antarctica where In the meantime, the second party, they resulted in the fixation of a funda— 1500 miles to the west, were having even mental meridian in Adelie Land. less success in wireless terms. Their base was established in February 1912, and Antarctic Struggles the first blizzard they experienced The party in Adelie Land had set up brought both masts down, camp in January but because of bliz- One only was re-erected, 37 feet high. zards were unable to start erecting their It was then discovered that a detector wireless masts until mid-April. Twenty and other parts were missing, and hope holes were dug in the ice to provide of receiving signals from Adelie Land anchorages for the stay-lines. Dynamite and elsewhere was abandoned. M91433 — 521171111994 27 Hell ofa Time perished. The ship turned back but a On Macquarie Island, however, wire- fierce gale prevented any landing or less work continued successfully. The visual communication with the shore. Pennant Hills high power station in Time was now vital, and once again the Sydney asked for reports on tests it was Aurora turned towards the west. making. News was regularly received from other land stations and from ships Adelie Land Calling in the Tasman Sea. With the ship gone, those left be- One of the transmissions from Ade— hind, numbering seven, settled in for the lie Land was heard faintly on September winter. The aerial was up again and the 5, ‘Please inform Pennant Hills ’. operator, S.N. Jeffryes, who had relieved A.J. Sawyer, the Macquarieoperator then Hannam, was at the wireless every night called Adelie repeatedly for hours, but calling and listening. On 15 February without success. On the 29th he heard 1913, he heard Macquarie Island send- another call, ‘Having a hell of a time ing a weather report to Hobart but was waiting for calm weather to put up more unable to make contact himself. Five masts’, and October 3 brought, ‘We do days later Sawyer, in Macquarie, heard not seem to be able to get Macquarie him and keyed back ‘Good evening’, Island. All is well, though bad weather whereupon a Leyden jar broke down has so far prevented any attempt at and contact was again lost. sledging’. Later in the month (on the 23rd) signals were exchanged and a message Missing Party was sent to the Governor—General of Equipped with a receiver, but no Australia, via Macquarie, explaining transmitter, the expedition’s ship, the what had happened to the Mawson par- steam-yacht Aurora, set out in Decem- ty, and seeking the King’s agreement to ber 1912 to bring back the parties from naming the land the expedition had dis- the Antarctic. On arrival in Adelie Land, covered to the east, ‘King George V also it was learned that Douglas Mawson and Land’. Special messages were sent two colleagues had not returned from an to the relatives of Mawson’s two com- extended exploration trip. panions lost in the ice. While the ship waited, the broken The first news received in return wireless mast ashore was re-erected in was that Captain Scott and his party had On case it became necessary to leave a small died on their South Pole expedition. was re— party to search for the missing men. By March 7, the King‘s approval that of the early February, however, the ship could ceived by wireless for part Adelie Land and wait no longer if it was to successfully Antarctic lying between collect the western party and not be, it- Oates Land to be named as requested. self, marooned in the winter ice. Shortly after sailing, Adelie Land Freak Conditions radioed that Mawson had just returned The station was now operational . 8 1 Notes alone, his two companions having every night from pm. to am. 28 M9133 — 21221111994 The station on Macquarie Island

The antenna on Macquarie Island

M9133 — fllplif1994 29 were made of the strength of the signals ‘umbrella’ aerial with lead-in wires at received, the presence of atmospheric the centre. In its place, two masts now static, and intermittent discharges from supported an inverted ‘L’ directional snow particles (St Elmo’s fire), together aerial which, in August, as the first signs with fading caused by auroral activity. of the Antarctic Spring appeared, re— Listening alone was a demanding established contact with Macquarie 1. task. It was difficult to hear signals through the electrical interference; there Message from the Queen was the constant howling of the wind, News was then received that the plus the noise of the expedition’s dogs Queen had agreed the naming of the sheltering just outside the hut! tract of Antarctic coast discovered by Jeffryes spent entire evenings trying the expedition’s western party, ‘Queen to transmit or receive a single message. Mary Land’. On August 6, Macquarie A week of auroral displays would result signalled enigmatically, ‘Food done, but in a complete blackout, then freak con- otherwise all right’. Five days later ditions would occur and traffic would be came the reassuring news that a New exceptional. He sometimesheard stations Zealand government steamer was on its in Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne and way with much needed supplies; and Hobart, and on one occasion worked di- when it arrived remarks made over the rectly with the latter. air indicated that the islanders were He sent weather reports nightly to having a night of revelry! Macquarie, which were often received In September, when the sea was when no communication was possible frozen, communication was maintained in the reverse direction. These reports with difficulty. In October, when the ice comprised three meteorological code disappeared, wireless signals peaked at words, for barometric reading, velocity, twilight, finally fading when daylight and direction of wind. The velocities re- became continuous in November. corded were so high (103 mph on one That month, experiments were made occasion), that no codes then existed for with a small receiver mounted on a them and new ones had to he invented. sledge, using a length of copper wire run out on the surface of the ice as an Aerial Experiments aerial. Signals were received over short 5 miles. In June, part of the main mast came distances, but not beyond down and experiments were made with kite aerials in a steady 70 mph wind. Home at Last After three falls to the ice a box kite was It was time for the expedition to re— than had beyond further use, and two other de~ turn home, almost a year later arrived at signs shared the same fate. In July the been anticipated. The Aurora Adelie broken aerial was repaired. Macquarie in November and at As rebuilt earlier, it had a centre Land on December 13, and everyone 26 mast at 90ft, and two smaller ones of was back in Australia by February Island 30ft, between which was stretched an 1914. The station on Macquarie 30 M9435 — 54137111994 The station on Adelie Land. Operator, Walter Hannam

MMa3 — flpnf1994 31 had proved its worth. It was taken over hundred miles at best. Their determina- by the Australian government and con- tion and perseverance in establishing tinued to send me- communication at teorological reports all was remarkable. to the Common- In,‘ these days of wealth Weather high technology Bureau. and material com— The expedition forts it is hard to had discovered new visualise what they lands and had car— endured to get their ried out scientific messages through! work in the fields of terrestrial mag- netism, biology, © 1994 Tony Smith. geology, glaciolo- This article origi— gy, tides and ocea- nally appeared in nography. Their Amateur Radio, wireless work was journal ofthe Wire- almost incidental less Institute of to all this, but they Australia, March demonstrated the 1986, and has potential of radio in been amended and polar exploration slightly enlarged Sir Douglas Mawson, despite the fact that for MM. Photo— leader of the expedition in those days be- graphs reproduced fore short-wave from The Home of radio, communication was restricted in the Blizzard, by Sir Douglas Mawson, the Antarctic summer to only a few London, 1915).

AUTHOR’S NOTE Hannam, then aged 26, chose the site for the successful Macquarie After this article appeared in Ama- Island station and was in overall teur Radio, several readers wrote to charge of the expedition’s wireless the magazine with further informa- telegraphy arrangements. tion concerning the operator in the Prior to the Mawson expedition photograph of the station in Adelie he was a member of the provisional Land. He was Walter (Wal) H. committee, appointed at a meeting Hannam who was relieved by S.N. on 11 March 1910, briefed to set up Jeffryes when the Aurora arrived in the Institute of Wireless Telegraphy early 1913. of Australia; which eventually

32 Mam — filpril1994 became the Wireless Institute of also due to be carried out, with the Australia. And at its first General main restoration programme planned Meeting he was elected the Institute’s for a year’s time. There have appar- first Honorary Secretary. ently been other visits to the site, as He held the amateur call there are two field huts there from VK2AXH for many years up to the expeditions in 1978 and the mid-80s. time of his death, and his QSL card A further project involves the carried the photograph used in this building of a replica of Mawson’s article endorsed ‘the picture shows hut on a site in Melbourne (site of VK2AXH (Wal) in the Antarctic the old Carlton Brewery, in Swan— 1912’. ston Street), this year, as a fund- In 1984, a letter to Amateur raising exercise for the maintenance Radio, from Wal Hannam’s eldest of the original hut. It is planned to nephew, appealed for contributions open the replica to the public most to ‘Project Blizzard’ which aimed to days, with ex-Antarctic expedition send two private expeditions to re- members available to answer ques— store the Mawson Expedition’s hut, tions and tell visitors about life in at what is now Commonwealth Bay, the Antarctic. to its original condition. The Wireless Institute of Austra- The outcome of this project is lia has commemorated the first wire- not known but a recent letter in less signals made from Antarctica to Aurora, magazine of the ANARE the outside world, as described in (Australian National Antarctic Ex- the above article, by instituting the peditions) Club, December 1993, re- WIA Antarctic Award. This is for ported on the current activities of a confirmed contacts with ten amateur ‘Mawson’sHut Restoration Commit- stations operating in Antarctica on tee’ organised by Sir Peter Derham. or after 23 February 1988, the 75th A small party of about six people anniversary of the original transmis- was due to go to Commonwealth sions. Special endorsements are Bay for 10—15 days in December/ available for particular modes such January, hoping to replace a number as CW. Full details can be obtained of beams in the roof of the hut which, from the Federal Awards Manager, as at a year ago, still appeared to be WIA, 3/105 Hawthorn Road, intact. Caulfield North, Vic. 3161, Austra- Some general maintenance was lia. (Send 2xIRCs).

: {enipy'readingIMarsuni'Ma'g‘nificahpl'eaée .yourifrie'iids ”If you tell :_ aboutius, and-encourage them to take aura subécriptioh'tdov ‘

9mm — apzi[1994 33 Info Those!

Readers require further information on thefollowing keys, etc. Please write to Tony Smith, c/o the Editorial Ofiice (see insidefront cover), ifyou can help. All useful information received will be published in MM in a later issue

Unknownbrass key with three terminals at rear. Accompanied by an ATC code Davies learning book published by ' Wyn Longmans, 1941, price 1/-

Collection/Photo:

MH

4X1

Set of two adjustable spark gaps on marble base, Viiensky German pre-WWII. Use unknown. Perhaps probably Alex used for communications, but could be part of HF sparksurgical equipment? Informationwelcomed

Collection/Photo:

Davies

Wyn Unknownkey brass. Has 0.25/,1F condenserin base, and black

Collection/Photo: painted area along top of ridged lever

34 MM33 — flpril 1994

FTER READING TONY was standard equipment on many types SMITH’S ARTICLE on of British (and some American) aircraft page 18 of MM30, I was of the 1937—1950 period. instantly able to put my hand on the more common Type B identification Landing Procedures switchbox, having the same reference The switches were wired in different number, i.e., 5C/372. ways. Some just connected to the white Several aircraft using the switch were lights (one above and one below); and previously mentioned in MM (Anson, sometimes just to the navigation lights, Bolinbroke, Lancaster, Lysander, Ox- i.e., red, green, white, upper, and red, ford, Spitfire, Tempest), and they were green, white, lower. also used in Sunderland flying boats. My During the war years, ‘visual silence’ own experience of was just as impor- these switches was tant as radio si— on Ansons, Battles, lence, although this Wellingtons,Dako- More on the Aircraft silence had to be tas, Catalinas and . . . . broken at times. Hudsons. Identification SWitCh Therefore, only You might limited use was think that Ameri— by Vic Reynolds, G3COY/G4A TC made of the identi- can aircraft, such as fication lights for the Hudson, would communicating. have original USA In the circuit type switches still prior to landing, for installed but not so! example, the letters It often happened VX-B would be that the American flashed to indicate gear was stripped ‘206 Squadron — out and UK equip— aircraft B’; or TF- ment installed. (As A, to indicate ‘200 late as mid—1942 I Squadron — aircraft was still using the A’. The T.R.9 and RAF’s R.1082/ the R.1082fT.1083 T.1083 in brand were not suitable new Hudsons. for making such Whatever hap— contacts by radio. pened to all that Try winding-in a lovely Bendix trailing aerial on the equipment?) In Type B identificationswitchbox 50/372 downwind leg of an fact, the switchbox Collection: Vic Reynolds, Photos: GeoffArnold approach!

36 M433 — apnf1994 \“fi‘

7((lliflllllfllll "Imaentfludt LQM§\\

.N at

View of switchbox with front .. cover ~ removed, and (right) connection I | I drawing from AP. 1095A I l I l I I TO DDWNWARD 1'0 1'0 UPWARD IDENTIFICATION SUPPLY IDENTIFICATION LAMP LAMP

At Sea Another important need for identi- fication was when approaching a con— voy at sea. Here, the ‘letters of the day’ would be flashed. A challenge; and hopefully a correct reply. Sometimes coloured ‘Very’ lights were fired with the ‘colours of the day.’ However, these could be mistaken for anti-aircraft fire, which sometimes it was! Likewise, when approaching a friendlycoast AA fire might come snak- ing up. Then the lower identification

Instrument panel of Sunderland III flying boat with the older style identification switchbox (identifiedas No. 33), used for downward identificationlamps From Pilot's Notes. A.P. 15660, 2nd Edn

Mil/(33 — 54pm? 37 lights would be keyed to send the letters 10F/ 1047561. Communication between of the day. Again, hopefully, someone aircraft and ships by Aldis was never down there in charge of the guns could part of the training syllabus — not for read Morse and would stop the firing. aircrew or for the navy. But that’s an— other story! Kept to a Minimum Regarding the ‘V’ signals described For safety, signalling of any kind by Dick Johnson GZFFO (‘Letters’, was kept to a minimum. Without contra— MM31, p.48), no pilot I flew with would dicting that statement, however, I may have permitted unnecessary light from add that there was much more visual the aircraft. Even the glow from the 8 signalling than was generally realised. volt filaments of a VT25 (T. 1082 output I spent more time on the Aldis trig- valve) seemed like an arc lamp — and a ger, for example, than I spent on the ‘give-away’ to the enemy on a pitch— RAF’s boat-shaped Key, Telegraph, black night. MM

findersfor Morsum Magmficat Tidy up your bookshelf with these attractive binders. Covered in a hard-wearing red grained finish, with the magazine title blocked in gold on the front cover, each binder holds eight issues of the magazine. retained by strong wires, but easily removable should the need arise. Price £5.20 each to UK addresses (inc. VAT). Overseas addresses by surface mail: EC countries — £6.11 (inc. VAT); Rest of the world — £5.20 (no VAT). All prices include postage and packing. Send your order with a cheque or postal order or credit card details (numberand expiry) to: G C Arnold Partners,9 Wetherby Close, Broadstone, Dorset BH18 8JB, England Overseas payments must be in Sterling

Hear! Hear! On a letter from the USA comes this promo- tional slogan with a difference — turning the ‘opposition)ns catch-phraseon its head! SUPPORThis!THE KNOW-CODE LICENCE

38 Mama — 91217111994 Infatuation Short fireafis

O mystic fascination, Steam Morse O fate idealized, Mr Bailey, of Salford, proposes steam- I’m but a mass of molecules, whistles for signalling in fogs at sea by Reversely polarized. means of the Morse alphabet. Whistles I’m vanquished by a sorcery have been expressly made at the Albion No amulet can cure, works, Manchester, suitable for the pur- For Love, are the magnet, you is of which And I the armature. pose. Use made two valves, balance each other. The more I circle round you, In this a 12-in whistle is opened Love’s current stronger grows, way with 100 lbs of Till leaping forth from heart to heart, steam as easily as one of Love’s are electric glows. 2m with 30 lbs of steam. In very dense Against the ardor of that flame, fogs a l2-in whistle is heard 6 miles off, Insurance won’t insure, and a 6—in whistle 3 miles off. With the For, Love, you are the magnet, Morse alphabet 20 words a minute can And I the armature. be telegraphed. The messages un-numbered, Fmm The Telegraphic Journal Of fond endearment fly, London, 15 June 1876 At once, in all directions, The wireless they outvie. Sending and Spacing A heart is at the key, throbbing A large percentage of the difficulty in Its dots and dashes sure, reading code can be attributed to the For, Love, are the you magnet, in between letters And I the armature. irregularity spacing and words by the one sending. This prac- I dwell within field of force, your tice makes sending difficult and receiv- In that blest region where, a This to ignore Your strength is to the distance, ing problem. tendency uniform accounts for stu- Inversely as the square. spacing many No influence external, dents becoming stalled at low speed. The Can me from you allure, urge to push forward in their own send- For, Love, you are the magnet, ing causes them to acquire a jumbled And I the armature. mental image of all characters. At last we’ll cling together, Seldom does an operator send cor- Apart no more to roam, rectly in excess of his own consistent With hearts attuned harmonic, receiving speed and with proper regard We’ll sing of Ohm, sweet Ohm. to spacing, although it is a common be- One circuit never broken, lief amongst inexperiencedoperators that While life and love endure, their sending is good at a much greater Forever the you magnet, speed than they are able to read from the And I the armature. other fellow. (Park Benjamin, WirelessAge, 1915) Candler System Course, Lesson 7(1931)

Mill/£33 — fllpn'f 1994 39 N MM16, p.17, THERE IS A need for a cut-out in the working surface PHOTOGRAPH of this key to enable the coil assembly to hang be— which I mistakenly described as low the key. I have the key wired up to a combined key and sounder, mainly receive pre—recorded signals from a cas— because it does in fact work admirably sette recorder, and it is quite fascinating as a sounder, and I had wired it up as to see, and hear, the key thumping up such for demonstration purposes! and down on its own as if controlled by H o w e v e r , an invisible hand! thanks to Eric Wiring from the Palmer G3FVC, two coils, and from editor of QRV, Creed Trainer Key the key itself, runs journal of the RAF to a terminal block by Tony Smith G4FAI Amateur Radio So- at the bottom of the ciety, and several assembly, and this fellow members of is accessed through RAFARS, I have now identified the key a cut-out in the black metal casing. The as being part of the Creed Morse train- casing is heavy and resonant and seems ing system used in the RAF during to be intended to magnify the sound of WWII. the key when receiving signals. The base appears to bear the mark- Eric Palmer referred me to a reprint ing AM REF No. 10F/525 (although this of an article from Aeroplane magazine is rather indistinct and I can’t be abso- of9 June 1944, which appeared in QRV, lutely sure about it). The base is pol- Autumn 1989. This article described the ished wood, 63/4 x 3m, and all the metal training of aircraft wireless operators work is white metal. Protruding below at an unnamed RAF School of Radio the key is a black metal casing covering (identified in 1989 by Eric as No 2 two solenoids hanging downwards. Radio School, Yatesbury), and includes Rods extend from each end of the a description of the Creed Morse keying arm down through the base into Trainer using student’s keys apparently the centre of each coil. As the key is similar to my key. depressed, the front rod goes down into one coil and the back rod comes up out Instructors’ Idiosyncrasies of the other coil. Conversely, as the coils According to the 1944 article, the receive incoming signals alternately, the final Morse examination of the course magnetic actions of the solenoids move was at 18 wpm, and special methods the keying arm up and down in sympa— had been evolved to teach ‘this some- thy with the signals. what difficult subject’ in the shortest possible time. In order to avoid the No Hands! ‘unavoidable idiosyncrasies’ of the in-. When mounted on a desk, there is a structors, it says, pupils received

40 Mafia — filprif 1994 elementary Morse training from the Memories Creed automatic machine. Following an appeal in QRV, several Each learner had a Creed trainer in RAFARS members wrote to me with front of him, while the instructor con— memories of the Creed trainer. Ron trolled a master unit. Punched tapes Brooks, G3YLL, trained as W/OP (AIR) contained individual exercises, which at No. 4 Radio School, RAF Madley, could be sent at any speed by the master near Hereford, in 1943. He recalls hav-

Smith

Tony

Photo:

Key AM HEF No. 10F/525, used with the Creed Morse Trainer. A heavy resonating cover (not shown) fits over the solenoids unit, to drive the solenoids fitted under ing sending practice on the trainer from each key, causing the keys to move up time to time. ‘The instructor put on a and down in accordance with the signals Creed tape at his desk and we students sent had to hold the key in the approved The exercises sent were printed on a fashion while our keys followed the blackboard in advance and to hear the tape’. He remembers that the Creed keys correct Morse symbol via headphones were set with a very large gap, ‘and the the oscillating keys had to be actuated resultant clanking noise that ensued was by the operators in exact synchronisa- quite something.’ tion with the master unit. An alternative Les Avory, G2FQP, was in the first use of the Creed Trainer, said the article, Radio Class at Compton Bassett in 1940 was transmission practice, when a per- and recalls 50 of these keys being in- manent record of the signals sent was stalled for training purposes. The idea, obtainable from the punched tape. he says, was to teach operators the

5mm — fllpn'f 1994 41 necessary wrist movement, while speed I HAVE ASKED the RAF Museum at was controlled by the instructor. He Hendon to check their records but they too remembers the noise, saying ‘the cannot find such a key listed in the vari- mechanical noise was overpowering!’ ous AP ’s dealing with signals equipment, Tom Luxmore, G3AWL, remembers so I may have misread the reference the keys at Compton Bassett in Febru— number. I am intrigued by the sounding ary 1942 being used to assist Morse platefitted to this instrument, which sug- sending. ‘A Morse character was heard gests that apart from ‘tone’ Morse it in your headphones and was then sent may have been intended for sounder mechanically via the key movement’. training as well. If anyone can provide Also recalling the large gap he says that further information about the Creed working together in a classroom they Morse Trainer, especially if they have a sounded ‘like nut—crackers going hell manual or handbook, or can suggest for leather!’ where further information might be MM obtained, please contact me. TS

Back issues of MM, Nrs 1-6, 8—11, & 22. Boris Readers ’filflls Real FSTFS, PO Box 49, 59730 Solesmes, France. Key WT 8 Amp No.2, two bridges, with simplified spring tensioner (compression spring). WANTED Gerry Farrance G3KPT, 51 Amberley Green, Great Barr, Birmingham B43 5T]. Copy ofMM Issue No 25. J. George Diggelmann, Untere Bahnhofstr. 19, 9500 Wil/Switzerland, WANTED/EXCHANGE ’phone +41 7322 7372. Americankey collector seeks purchase/trade for Back issues of MM, Nrs 1—19, 22—23 & 25. camelbacks, Chubbock, Melehan, Valiant and Good quality photocopies acceptable. Raymond other unusual telegraph keys. Send photo, info, Lee VRZUW, PO Box 62316, Kwun Tong Post etc, to Joel Wisotsky N2LAI, 31 Cow Lane, Office, Hong Kong. Great Neck, NY 11024, USA.

FISTS CW Club — The International Morse Preservation Society FISTS exists to promote amateur CW activity. It welcomes members with all levels of Morse proficiency, and especially newcomers to the key.

. The club has awards, nets (including a beginners’ net), dial-a-sked tor beginners. straight key activities, QSL bureau, newsletter, and discounts from traders. Further information can be obtained from Geo. Longden (53208, 119 Cemetery Road, Darwen, Lancs BBS 2L2. Send an see or two IRCs.

G-QRP Club The G-QRP Club promotes and encourages low-power operating on the amateurbands with activity periods. awards and trophies. Facilities include a quarterly magazine, Morse training tapes. kits, traders’ discounts and a QSL bureau. Novices and SWLs welcome. Enquiries to Rev. George Dobbs G3RJV, St Aidan’s Vicarage, 498 Manchester Road, Rochdale, Lancs OL11 3HE. Send a large see. or two lRCs

42 MM} — apnt 1994 yourLetters

Readers’ letters on any Morse subject are always welcome, but may be edited when space is limited. When more than one subject is covered, letters may be divided into single subjects in order to bring comments on various matters together for easy reference

Morse at the Movies lowed by WI (Ink-Monkey—Ink — ‘I say In the excellent semi—documentary TV again’). VE I_MI flows more smoothly film, the first Heimat, the son Paul was from the key than those eight dots, I a keen radio enthusiast who built the believe. first radio in his village. When he got it Reg Prosser GW4BUS going he received a station sending Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales authentic Morse, the content of which, unfortunately, I cannot recall. London Calling Wilf Corkish GDOIFU I cannot comment on weekly programme Onchan, Isle ofMan information (MM31, p.48), but I do re- member reading about, and then copy- Erasure Signal ing, the first 12 wpm Morse bulletin Listening around the amateur bands, I sent by the BBC on medium wave. I can’t help but notice what a pickle was serving in the ex-Estonian Kalev at neophyte CW operators get into when the time and I think we were lying in they are obliged to use the eight-dot Sunderland. erasure signal — and they have to use it I read about the new service in a quite a lot in their early stages of the newspaper and actually copied the whole Morse code craft. of the first broadcast which was sent late To count all those dots is an inhibit— afternoon local time. It was a concise ing matter: does one send a couple of summary of war news which could triplets and then add the odd two? Or is easily have been written on a small sheet it a case of carefully counted single dots? of paper for passing around amongst To get the erasure signal right requires Resistance groups. The language was mental arithmetic, and that’s quite off- English. Whether other frequencies were putting. used I cannot now remember. What do we ancient brass-pounders Gus Taylor G8PG send to correct our errors? We cheat. Greasby, Merseyside Off-hand, it’s hard to recall what we actually send instead of the righteous Those Tones eight dots. Vic—Eddy, as we used to call In any CW contact one gives, and re— it in the old Royal Corps; yes, V—E fol- ceives, an RST report. In this age of

Mnm — aprir1994 43 modern rigs and mains or battery sup— life when I should have stayed loyal to plies, the T (tone) report is invariably the ‘straight’ key. My wife bought me T9. Of course it can exhibit chirp or an authentic Vibroplex for my 50th drift or be slightly off frequency but I birthday and it made a new man of me. feel that it must, basically, be a T9 After some weeks of assiduous prac- report — at least on HF. tice, I summoned the courage to clear For some time I have experienced some traffic with North Foreland Radio/ difficulty in explaining to Morse GNF. It was disastrous; after 32 years students exactly what these various T of pounding brass, first in the Royal reports mean, never mind what they Signals and then at sea, I suffered acute actually sounded like. I have always stage-fright! assumed that they were designed for The old train ferry I was on didn’t use in the days of spark transmitters help, with its shallow draught and 20° operated from convertors of one sort or rolls. The bug would send no dots at all another. With modern equipment these when we rolled to starboard, and just a various sounds are just not heard. Or continuous dash on a port-side wallow. am I missing something? GNF was quite terse. ‘Use a proper key’ A recent item in Radio Communica- he recommended. I instantly complied. tion about a Canadian amateur who had What a rotten loss of face though. constructed a spark transmitter, and of- After mastering the bug, I graduated fered tape recordings of what it sounded to electronic iambic keyers and now, like, sparked off (sorry!) a discussion at having passed the three score and ten my local club. During this, it transpired years mark, I find I have become that a couple of our older members had addicted to them. memories of a record, or even a wax Reg Prosser GW4BUS cylinder, which gave some indication of Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales the sounds of the T1 to T9 tones. I wonder if any MM readers have Morse on the Don 5 information about these recordings, and It was interesting to see a photo of this particularly whether any tapes (cassettes) key (from a Telephone Set D Mk V) on might be available? page 39 of MM32. The ‘Don 5’ was the I, and my students, would love to workhorse of field telephones and was have this dilemma resolved! issued almost like confetti to every kind Ron Wilson G4NZU of army unit. West Bridgford, Nottingham I was introduced to it when I was an infantry signaller in the Royal Ulster Semi-Automaticsat Sea Rifles, and we used it extensively for Fellow Marconi-man, John Beech, training at the depot in Omagh. There strikes a loud chord (MM31, p.46) were two ways to call a distant station, when he writes of his use of the semi— the first was a magneto activated by a automatic key at sea. I likewise broke crank handle which rang a bell in the Company rules by using one at a time of distant telephone. The second was to

44 571191433 — flpn'f 1994 use the Morse key, which sounded a Apparently the US Weather Service built-in buzzer. used them for many years, sometimes This buzzer was used for all Morse getting up to heights above twenty thou- teaching and practice (except for lamp, sand feet. Observations were taken in flag and heliograph) — the only other this way at points all over the USA. As suitable equipment available was the one would expect, the steel kite wires Fullerphone, which always seemed to often picked up large static charges. As be in short supply. far as I recollect, only one fatal accident After qualifying, we were sent to was recorded in the book, but there were guard the Lincolnshire coast against many instances of the weather observer invasion, stretched out from Marsh ‘being rendered senseless by the electri- Chapel to Mablethorpe. One night I cal discharge’. arranged for the Mablethorpe operator Presumably this mass of data was that we should send Morse to each telegraphed to regional and local centres other, on the Don 5s, so as to keep our by landline, so one wonders how this speed up. was done. Was there a special weather At 1 am, when all was quiet, we network, or were there local lines from began. We had not been going more than the observatories to one of the major a couple of minutes when there was a commercial networks? furious bellowing on the line. It seems Gus Taylor GSPG that the company at Saltfieet had tied Greasby, Merseyside into the line and the company sergeant (Ifanyone knows the answer to Gus ’s major was asleep on a camp bed by the questions, please write to MM. — Ed.) telephone! He spoke fluently and at some length, RAF 10F/8782 Key using words which ought not to have Although I have no personal recollec- been uttered in front of young soldiers! tion ofthe key (MM32, p.38) by its RAF Needless to say, it put paid to any fur— nomenclature, 10F/8782, some bells are ther attempt to communicate on the key, ringing! I suppose that after 34 years and I never came across an instance of (1936—1970) with the RAF, mostly in telegraphy on a Don 5 again. Perhaps communications, I ought to have seen others had better luck? most types of key on general issue. JeffJeffrey VK6AJ The ‘10F/8782’ is not familiar but if any South Perth, Western Australia reader can get access to the archives the appropriate section of the RAF Stores Weather Kites Bible, AP. 1086, Book 4, Part 2, may Reading ‘Up, Up and Away!’ (MM31, provide the answer. p.29) reminded me that some years ago What does ring a bell is the marking while doing work on kite—lifted anten- ‘P.S. 4707G’, at least the ‘P.S.’ does. nas I came across a fascinating book Surely, this is a Marconi Part or about the use of kites for raising instru- Drawing Number (or both). I do recol- ments used for weather forecasting. lect a key of similar appearance being

M9133 — 2127111994 45 supplied by the Marconi Company, t0~ One varied the speed of the Creed gether with other pieces of high—speed machine by moving a rubber tyred wheel Morse telegraphy equipment, at AMWT across the face of a disc driven at motor Ismailia, Egypt, around 1938 for use as speed with no governor! Its re—setting the RAF Middle East terminal of the accuracy was also problematical. The first high—speed automatic circuit to AM GNT machine’s speed control was by in London. adjustment of spinning governor weights On reflection, it was similar in action which varied the clutch pressure. to key reference 5805-99-541-1439 now The auto transmitters found a niche generally available on the surplus mar— for themselves in the training commit- ket. It was used to make SVCs at hand ment of the services. It was nice to see speed and engineers’ order wire type of that an example has survived. communication. It might, therefore, have D.A. Coe G4PZQ had limited application and not have been Wymeswold, Leicestershire on general issue. (Does any reader have access to the Other items comprising the high— RAF Stores Bible as mentioned by Mr speed terminal were the Undulator for Coe, or information on Marconi recording the Morse on paper slip, the products which may help to identify the Morse keyboard perforator (from Creed) 10F/8782 key? — Ed.) and the auto tr a n 8 mi tte r Western (o r i g i n ally Electric Key from Creed). The unknown Together with key on page 18 the Imperial of MM31 is a t y p e w r i t e r Western Elec- modified for tric leg key upper case identical to the i 1 (c a p ta s ) , one in the en— these were the closed photo. basic tools of The manufac- the trade. turer’s name is It was a on the shorting pleasant sur- switch which prise, there— Western Electric leg key is missing fore, to see the Photo/collection:DavidFl. Pennes, MD from the key Great North- owned by Ri- ern Telegraph auto transmitter on page chard L. Thomas. My specimen was used 3 of the same issue. The GNT auto head by Western Union and came from the replaced the Creed machines quite early St. Paul, Minnesota office. on due, I suspect, to its better speed David R. Pennes, MD control. Indianapolis, IN, USA

46 mama — flpril 1994 Proper Nouns grounded submarine and tried to ren- Thanks to John N. Elwood (MM31, p.44) dezvous with his mother submarine by for pointing out that m (or UK) means travelling overland. He was unsuccess— capitalisation. I agree it does meet a cer— ful and was captured. tain need when copying Morse by long- Enquiries at the British and hand, with W sent before and after a American Naval Historian’s Offices word or phrase, but it’s not the same as a and at the Japanese Embassy, have so signal indicating that ‘the following word far failed to produce any information is a proper noun and its initial letter is to about the wireless equipment installed be capitalised.’ (The signals today, I in these 81ft—long ‘midget’ submarines. think, are UN for ‘BLOCKS ON’ and Perhaps a reader of MM may know W: for ‘BLOCKS OFF’). the whereabouts of a report on the wire- Forgive me, John, I’m just an old less equipment, the whereabouts of the nit-picker. Proper nouns will go un- equipment itself, or best of all have a capitalised until the final dot of the last photograph of it? If so I would be de— obsolete old telegraphist as he goes lighted to have details, please. silent key — and may that be centuries The broad details of the equipment, from now! made by OKI Electric Company, are Reg Prosser GW4BUS that the receiver was a 7-valve super- Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales heterodyne using 6D6, 6L7G, 6B7 and 42 valves. The local oscillator was Japanese Midget Submarines crystal controlled on either of two fre- When three Japanese Type A ‘midget’ quencies between 7.9 and 10.1Mc/s submarines unsuccessfully raided Syd- but provision was made for either or ney harbour in 1942, two of the three both of these channels to be preset as were salvaged and re-constructed as a self-excited Hartley oscillators. A beat single unit for the Australian War Me— ' oscillator was also provided. morial. The third has never been found. The transmitter was a two-stage Unfortunately, the wireless equip- MOPA using 510 pentode valves (simi- ment was ‘removed for examination’ by lar to RK20) running 1000 volts on the the Navy and has been lost. I have anode from a motor generator. The found a schematic diagram of it in the screen supply was obtained from the Australian Archives, but there is no receiver vibrator HT supply. photograph of the equipment. Like the receiver, two crystal fre- Two other Type A midgets were quencies were available and either or captured intact, one by the Americans both could be preset by calibration after Pearl Harbour, and the other by the chart to a frequency in the range 7.9 to British after the raid on Diego Suarez 10.1Mc/s. There were separate output Harbour (Madagascar) in May 1942 tuning circuits and separate aerial cou- when Japanese Sub Lieut. Akeida sank pling units. the tanker British Loyalty and severely On CW, the transmitter would damaged Ramillies. He abandoned his have had about 100 watts output into a

Mam — filpn'l 1994 47 metal rod aerial only 2ft 3in long and an style, where a single word is never 21/2 inches in diameter. This could be used if three words can be substituted raised or lowered by a hand-wheel in for it. Good luck to the author; one hopes the conning tower. he ate well for a day or so on his fee. The transmitter could be grid modu- Gus Taylor G8PG lated for voice transmission. A tone Greasby, Merseyside oscillator was provided for MCW oper— ation. There were no meters provided, Fairey Swordfish Radio only internal tuning neons. Does anyone know what sort of radio The operator had no control over the gear was fitted in the Fairey Swordfish equipment other than a switch for Off; naval aircraft before WWII? Receive; and Transmit. The headphones Stan Shackleford GZHAX, Reading were high impedance, connected via a (Knowing of his early WWII experi- capacitor to the anode of the 42 audio ences flying in the ‘Stringbag’, as the valve. The microphone was a carbon Swordfish was affectionately known, we granule unit, as were the hydrophones. passed this query on to Vic Copley-May I would be delighted if someone F/G3AAG. He tells us that in 1940, the could enlarge on the above brief descrip— equipment was the A.P.1082 and 1083, tion. all communications being CW or MCW. C.G. Harvey VKIAU, I6 Leane St Later the ASV MkII wasfitted, and dur- Hughes, ACT 2605, Australia ing the course of the war equipment was updated several times. Morse in Great Houses Vic also mentioned a book entitled Surely this a classic example of some War in a Stringbag, by Commander poor penny—a-line hack trying to earn a Charles Lamb, DSO, DSC, RN, pub- crust! (See MM31, p.22. — Ed.). It is lished in 1977. He recommends it to sufficiently pseudo-technical to impress anyone interested in this remarkable a non-technical editor (and even more aircraft, what it did in WWII, and the so his non-technical readers), and I bet personal exploits of probably the most that the text is written in typical Victori— famous Stringbag pilot. — Ed.)

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48 Matias — apnt 1994 Morse QSLS

A series of reproductions of QSL cards with a Morse theme

NETHERLANDS AMATEUR RADIO

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