Difference between Amateur and Commercial Morse Exams

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

What a mistake elimination the Morse sending test was, and changing the Morse receiving test to the equivalent of the watered down Amateur Extra code multiple choice test from the ITU international treaty requirement which was "sending and receiving at least one continuous minute without error, English at 20 words per minute and five (5) letter cipher groups at 16 groups per minute.

After this was changed we had radio officers on ships who COULD NOT copy SOS calls sent out on 500 kHz by ships in distress.

I communicated with one such Radio Officer who requested a relay of his daily messages to the Company because both Slidell Radio WNU and Mobile, Alabama Radio WLO couldn't copy him. I soon found out it wasn't a matter of signal strength but it was the incomprehensible was he was sending. He was sending like a typical ham operator - extra dots and dashes and no spaces. It was a true nightmare to copy him. I finally told him QSD QRK NIL and shut my station down for the night.

Applicants for the Radiotelegraph license were previously failed if they couldn't send well. People's lives depended on their radio officer's ability to send and receive Morse.

When I first operated from a ship, I was on as second operator on TT WILLIAMSBURGH/WGOA and I called Galveston Radio/KLC on 500 kHz, he answered and told me to shift to my working frequency of 468 kHz and he'd respond on his working frequency of 484 kHz. KLC KLC DE WGOA WGOA QTC5 K // WGOA DE KLC QRV K.  And confidently - even though this was my first commercial CW QSO - I started sending my messages and KLC kept interrupting me asking for repeats of what I had sent.

At the time I had been an Amateur Extra licensee for seventeen years and I was a proud member of the First-class CW Operator's club and was well regarded as an excellent operator.  An excellent Amateur Radio operator perhaps but not even a competent commercial Radiotelegraph operator. I was running all my words and letters together.

I finished my first radiogram and expected KLC to QSL my message but he didn't respond!

The chief operator of WGOA told me KLC had dumped me because of my poor spacing. He told me I sounded like an amateur, that my sending was undecipherable. I licked my wounds, secured the starion, turned on the auto alarm receiver, and went to lunch as it was 1200. I returned at 1500 for the afternoon watch, called GALVESTON RADIO KLC shifted up to 468/484 and sent my five messages, this time giving double the space between words (before my spaces were slightly longer than the spacing between letters.

I was humbled but I became a better operator because of it.

73

David N1EA

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[Dr.Hess]

Well, Dave, by the time I was working you at WNU in '79-80, you were the best op out there. Always a pleasure to work you, versus the typical op sending dots and dashes the same length, no spacing at all and in solid Greek.

Fred Joy (W0RSW at the time) once told me that point to point ops were for speed. Coast station ops were dialacticians, copying all dialects of Morse Code.

73

Dr.Hess

NG6Y

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

Dr. Hess,

You're the best.  Your compliment means a lot to me and deserves at least my response of thanks. 

Thank you for your support and compliment. 

You were a fabulous operator yourself. 

I miss WNU.

I guess Fred Joy has passed away, I know Jan Edwards passed, I tried to find his wife, Yankee without success.  She worked in the WNU wire room.

Great operators without any doubt. 

73

DR

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[Rob Chamblee]

When I started at WNU on 9/16/80 fresh from NMG I also was humbled by the realization that my Coast Guard training and experience fell short of the expected proficiency of WNU standards. They took away my bug and made me use a DGM 2000 keyboard.  Fred Joy in his sage guidance provided me with his keen mentorship which has served me well in all aspects of my career and life.  

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[John Smale]

Couple of stories but I wasn't a merchant operator, I was Navy 65-69, I'm also a ham - K2IZ - another ham, K2TV, said he took his 2nd class radiotelegraph license in NYC, when they announced the code test everyone got up to move into the testing room but the Field Engineer said "This is the test for the big boys license, the ham test will be next".

     My first duty station out of Radioman A school was NAF Lajes Field, Azores, the Portuguese made us change our call from NAY to CTE, I spent 18 months there and on the day and eve watches we always had merchants calling us on 500, we'd switch to 468/474 and take either OBS or AMVERS, we had a wide variety of ships calling us, so many different nations, I had to learn to send and receive the merchant way, we never dropped anyone no matter how bad their fist was, we had one time when a ship called in with a medical emergency and the operators fist was terrible, we copied the message and started laughing, turns out it was the radio operator that had the medical emergency and the Captain was sending the message, turned out the radio operator picked the wrong woman, it was described that his male member was swollen and leaking fluids, he was in extreme pain when he urinated, we passed that on to Coast Guard Governors Island, NY and the local Air Force base hospital.

     My next duty station was USS Norris DD-859 out of Newport, I quickly found out that myself, 20, and the leading Radioman were the only ones that could sit a CW circuit, this really became a problem when we got to the Med., we lost all TTY capabilities so we had to clear traffic by CW, the leading RM and myself were off watch when one of the guys on duty woke me up, told me the commo wanted me in radio ASAP, turned out one of the guys on watch had tried sending traffic on CW, he actually had written the code on a piece of paper, AOK, Rota Spain, finally sent the Z signal for "put a qualified CW operator on the circuit", I spent several hours sending with a regular straight key, and remember, we were at sea, a destroyer is not exactly a cruise ship, we were bouncing around, thing is none of the other guys really cared, the only thing I got out of it was open gangway liberty when we were in Naples for a week.

73 John K2IZ 

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[Radio KH6O]

That's why they're called "amateurs," not "professionals." They're self-taught from start to finish. I hate to see them bashed like this.

Jeff KH6O (and NMO)

[John Davies]

Some of the best CW I ever heard were hams. JA1NUT for example, and there are many more.

John 9V1VV

[Mike Hutchins]

Agreed John....and some of the worst I've heard was on the Marine bands post-1970 or so.  Most of the bad stuff was from ships though, coast stns were generally good.

Mike, zl1mh etc.

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