Robert L. (Bob)
Shrader, W6BNB, author of 10 QST articles, died April 11 at
age 98. He was a long-time resident of Sebastopol, California.
His most recent QST article was "Using Mechanical CW Keys" in
the February 2010 issue. A prolific author at an age when most
settle into retirement, he also published articles in Ham
Radio and CQ. He was inducted into the CQ Amateur Radio Hall
of Fame in 2004.
At a young age, he was hired as a shipboard radiotelegraph
officer for the Dollar Lines, and sailed around the world six
times. During his long and prolific lifetime, Bob served as a
deputy sheriff, radio and electronics instructor, and chief of
the Freestone (CA) fire department. His textbook, Electronic
Communications, was published in 1959 by McGraw-Hill.
For more information on Bob's fascinating life, see his online
reminiscence.
Bob is survived by his wife Dorothy, W6ECU, a son Doug,
KJ6TEJ, and daughter Patricia.
THE CAREER AND
REMINISCENCES OF BOB SHRADER - W6BNB
W1TP TELEGRAPH AND SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT MUSEUMS: http://w1tp.com
The following accounts of the use of radios on ships in the
early part of the 20th century were provided by Bob Shrader -
W6BNB...
If you have any questions for him you may contact him by email
at w6...@aol.com
BOB'S CAREER:
Bob Shrader - W6BNB obtained his amateur radio license while
he was in high school. In 1932 he went to Central Trade School
to obtain his commercial telegraph and phone licenses.
In 1933 he went to sea as a radio operator for Dollar Line on
round- the-world trips (6 times) and then trans-Pacific on
other liners (12 times) then trips to Honolulu on Matsonia and
one trip on a freighter to Panama and back.
In 1939 he became deputy sheriff for Alameda County at KPDA
where worked phone, CW and did some patrol work. He was in
charge of radio and electricity training of deck Cadets at
U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, L.I. He returned
to the sheriff's office in 1945. In 1946 he took over teaching
day and night classes at Central Trade School, which later
became Laney College.
In 1959 he wrote a text book "Electronic Communication" and
other electronic and electricity texts for McGraw-Hill. In
1969 he retired and moved to Sebastopol with his wife and
spent 3 years building a new home. He joined the volunteer
fire department, ending up as Fire Chief of the Freestone Fire
Dept. He then went on to Twin Hills FD as Director. He wrote
"Amateur Radio, Theory and Practice", again for McGraw-Hill,
did short stints with Hewlett Packard in microwave repair in
1957, and as tech writer in 1979. In 1991 he brought out the
6th edition of E.C. And most recently, he wrote "Fire
Fighting, How It's Done" for Vision Books International, which
will be published in July 1997.
BOB'S EXPERIENCES AND REMINISCENCES:
Bob first wrote to me to ask me to identify a bug that he had
owned for many years:
He wrote:
The old bug in this picture has quite a
history. It is shown with my Bunnell double-speed key above
and my home brew sideswiper at the right..
On the first trip I made as rdo op around the world, the chief
op got tired of my changing his adjustments and suggested I
get myself a bug of my own. When we reached New York City I
spent $ 6 to buy this little bug brand new.
The round-the-world trips started in late 1933 and I used it
daily until 1939 at sea, then from '39 to '46 in police radio
CW, then from '46 to '69 while teaching rdo communications at
a trade school/junior college, and from '69 to date on the ham
bands. In 1937 while on the SS President Hoover it was used to
send the SOS while the ship was being bombed by Chinese
airplanes. Really a sweet feeling old friend. Hi.
I am sorry that I can't tell you the address where I purchased
the bug. All I remember was that it was on the North side of
Cortland Street on the West side of New York City. It was in
December of 1933 during a stop-over on my first trip around
the world as a Dollar Line radio operator.
We started from San Francisco and went from there to Honolulu,
Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, Penang, Columbo
Ceylon, Bombay, Suez, Port Said, Alexandria, Naples, Genoa,
Marseilles, New York, Boston, New York, Havana, Panama Canal,
LosAngeles and back home. What a trip for a 19 year old kid!
We used 2 kW spark transmitters for the medium frequencies
mostly. We also had a self-excited push-pull triode 1 kW HF
and MF transmitter. We used TRF receivers for HF and an IP-501
regenerative detector plus 2-stage AF receiver for MF and LF.
p> In 1937, while on our way to take Americans out of
Shanghai due to the Sino-Japanese war, the 635-ft luxury liner
SS President Hoover was at anchor in the Yangtze River,
waiting for clearance to move into the Woosung River and
Shanghai. All of a sudden we heard airplanes coming and then
the sound of bombs dropping in the water and on our top deck.
The skipper turned to me and said, "Well, Sparks, I guess you
better send an SOS." So I went into the radio room and flipped
on the "1 KW" VT (Vacuum tube) transmitter set and with my
trusty old Logan Speed-x bug sent a very fast SOS. Of course
we were always told to send a 1- minute transmission of 4-sec
dashes followed by 1-sec spaces before sending a distress
call. With the planes still overhead I decided that
information was for other conditions and I just let go with my
bug. I knew that the ops at the Shanghai radio stations were
very good operators and my 25 or so wpm sending would be no
problem to them.
We later found out that the planes were Chinese and that they
thought we were the Asama Maru, a big Japanese ship that was
supposed to be in the area. How they could miss the 30-foot
long American flag laid out on our top deck I don't know. But
is was something to remember. We were not supposed to be at
war! One dead and a few injured -- so we were lucky. Those
Chinese pilots were not too great as they had a sitting duck
with us at anchor there in the river.
The Dollar Line 2-kW spark transmitters in use at that time
had fast operating QSK keying relays. The keying circuit only
required a fraction of an ampere to key the many amperes in
the primary of the spark transformer. I measured the Leach
keying relay coil I have here that was used with spark
transmitters and it reads 225 ohms, which in series with a 250
ohm resistor was used across the regular 110-V dc line aboard
most ships in those days. The heavy duty keying contacts on
the bug easily handled that amount of current, about 0.25
amps. We were handling traffic at speeds up to at least 30 wpm
with no trouble with our spark sets.
In your last communication you suggested that information on
old time equipment might be of interest. So here is some
information about transmitters that I know of first hand - and
some that predated me but that I know about.
TRANSMITTERS:
The first transmitters, around the turn of the century, were
open-gap spark types. The 500-cps ac was stepped up by a
transformer and fed across a spark-gap in series with a
primary coil which developed 1000- cps damped waves that were
fed to the antenna. The resonant frequency of the antenna did
most to determine the transmitting frequency. In the teens the
gaps were often just open, or rotary types and made a terribly
loud noise and generated a lot of ozone. In the 20s the gaps
were made into many very short gaps in series, each being
surrounded by copper enclosures, with mica insulators between
copper holders so that each gap unit was not shorted. These
were called quenched gaps because the noise was quenched, and
so was the ozone.
Shipboard spark transmitters were usually built behind
vertical bakelite panels sitting on top of the operating
tables. I remember one ship's mate coming into the radio room
to shoot the bull with us. He made himself very comfortable
sitting on the desk top and leaning back against the spark
transmitter while we talked. His rear end was pushed up
against the 2-ft wide quenched gaps which stuck out in front
of the panel. When the ship was called, the operator on watch
forgot about the mate and switched on the spark transmitter to
answer. Boy did that mate jump! A 2-kW spark transmitter,
which was very loosely coupled to the antenna to provide a
not-to-wide signal (30 kHz at 100 miles?), could be used for
trans-Pacific communications with no trouble under reasonable
conditions. They can operate on all frequencies.
Spark transmitters were no longer used by U.S. ships after
WW2, although some foreign ships used them for many years
after that.
In the teens the arc transmitter was developed. A dc electric
arc has negative resistance across it. So, if an
antenna-to-ground circuit is interrupted by putting an
electric arc in series with it, the negative resistance of the
arc makes up for the positive resistance of the antenna
circuit wire and the radiation losses, so the antenna
oscillates at its fundamental 1/4-wave frequency. These rigs
put out nice clean unmodulated CW on lower frequencies. Most
of them used back-shunt keying, meaning that when the key was
down the signal was transmitted by the antenna at its resonant
frequency. When the key was up the keying relay shunted the
arc circuit to an LC dummy load tuned to some other far
removed frequency so the operator could copy the station who
was answering on the transmitting frequency.
The arc transmitter was going all of the time but only on the
desired frequency when the key was down. These rigs were very
good on higher wavelengths but down on the ship calling and
distress frequency of 600 meters (500 kHz to youngsters) they
sounded pretty burbly. Because the arc worked best in an
alcohol or hydrogen atmosphere, when they were first struck by
their operator, if there happened to any oxygen in the sealed
arc chamber the result was an explosion and the top would
swing back on its hinges. This threw out a sooty whiff that
would show up as a black stripe across the chest of the
operators white uniform. They did not like that. Arcs were not
used at sea after the '30s although hundreds-of-kilowatt rigs
ashore communicated during WW2 over long distances on
frequencies lower than 50 kHz.
The only arc transmitter that I used was the one we had set up
in our radio class room at the old Central Trade School in
1932. We had it explode.
We also gave local commercial stations KPH and KFS some QRM
when we would key it. But they knew the instructor so did
nothing about it.
I have worked other stations on 500 kHz who were using arcs.
There was something else I forgot to tell you about in the way
of old time tranmitters, the ones that used VTs.
In the late teens vacuum tubes became large enough to be used
in transmitters. By the mid-'20s an old spark transmitter was
converted into a "P-8" transmitter. Two push-pull 204A triodes
were installed in place of the quenched gaps in a
self-rectified Colpitts oscillator circuit. It put out
something over 100 W in the MF range. Later MOPA rigs were at
sea with a Master Oscillator and a Power Amplifier. Power
outputs were becoming greater. By the '30s Globe Wireless (not
to be confused with the present Globe Wireless) had a
2-Gammatron triode self-rectified push-pull oscillator
tranmitter for both HF and MF operations. By use of a Variac
on the front panel the power output could be adjusted from a
watt or two up to 1 kW. Its 500-Hz ac power source was doubled
to a 1000-Hz output modulated CW, a really nice signal to
copy. Also, it was over 100% modulated so it was pretty broad.
This was advantageous because the receivers at that time
drifted badly as did the transmitter. By this time LF
operations had dropped off to almost nil at sea.
RECEIVERS:
Original receivers at sea were either solid-state crystals or
other simple diode type rectifiers. They could only be used to
pick up modulated signals so they were usable with spark
signals and MCW transmissions. In fact up to this date SOS and
other emergency sets are supposed to use MCW to assure the
signals are audible on any kind of receiver, should they be
tuned to zero-beat with the transmitter.
In the teens triode oscillators were beginning to be used as
the detectors. Besides operating as a diode in the grid
circuit they also provided amplification in the plate
circuits. This was the well known "regenerative detector"
system. In oscillation it would beat against incoming signals
providing a beat-tone to be heard in the earphones. With a
2-stage amplifier it could provide enough amplification for
loudspeaker operation.
Being an oscillator and coupled to an antenna it also radiated
a constant CW signal that could be heard for several miles. At
sea all operators monitored the distress frequency of 500 kHz
constantly. As result, any time a ship would pass by within a
few miles its weak whistle signal would be heard. Once when
sending in an arrival message to the coastal station at
Colombo, Ceylon I keyed my receiver to send the message. The
operator at the dock station would not believe me. When I
turned on my 2-kW spark set and repeated the message he
believed me! His ears must still be ringing. During WW2 the
German subs would monitor 500 kHz and when they heard the weak
whistles they would find the ship and sink it. With an RF
amplifier in front of the detector this was not a problem.
That was the demise of the regenerative detector at sea. In
the mid-'30s superhets began to find their way into ship
communications.
73 W6BNB Bob
Bob started a
sideswiper net on 80M in California, it was still going on in
the 1980s when I came across it. I joined in when sailing
upstream along the California coast headed for Alaska. I
checked in using a Vibroplex, and I probably mistakenly
thought they were irritated that I did so, but in reality, no
one cared, they were just delighted that I checked in, cootie
senders are like that I found out, but I had a chance to
listen to some awesome cootie operators (all of whom I've
forgotten names, calls, except Bob who was legendary and very
generous with his time. He wrote "Electronic Communication"
which was the bible especially for those taking the Telegraph
FCC element 5 (telegraph procedure) and 6 (radiotelegraph
circuits and theory), in fact his edition 1 and 2 carried
information about Spark and Arc - both of which Bob had
learned on and used on his trips with Dollar Line - which was
the predecessor of American President Line.
From https://www.gjenvick.com/OceanTravel/SteamshipLines/DollarSteamshipLine.html
Dollar Line continued expanding its business in the late
1920s, buying five more "535 President Type" ships in 1926. In
that year, Dollar Line carried over 45,000 passengers and had
gross revenue of $6 million. Dollar encouraged others to
invest in Asia with his booklet, "Have You Investigated the
Oriental Market for Your Product?", helping to open up Asia to
20th-century industry. The Merchant Marine Act of 1928 (also
known as the JonesâWhite act) also helped Dollar Line,
allowing it to sign a lucrative new mail contract and
requiring it to build new ships to meet demand.
On May 16, 1932, Robert Dollar died at the age of 88 and was
succeeded by his son, Robert Stanley Dollar. Following Robert
senior's death, the company began a steady decline. In 1938.
American Mail Line became American President Lines.
We used to have a brief history of Bob's old sideswiper net
but it's gone missing from the web updates.
Bob was also active in the Society of Wireless Pioneers
"Intercontinental" net which was run by Hank W1HRQ who had
Âtwo 120 foot towers and strung 130 feet of wire between them.
He showed me what a great signal can be had if you just spend
the attention and money on a dipole like you usually do when
you put up a beam. How true.
Hank W1HRQ taught electronics for RCA and he was outstanding
say the many R/O's who took his class, no elitism of "the
educated" was his, which is fabulous and a wonderful
refreshment from the constant elitism we find today where
people who didn't pursue degrees are marginalized. Hank sent
with a Yaesu FT-101 and he inserted a 1 mfd capacitor across
the keyline to give the transmissions a wonderful bell shaped
tone like the old KFS (ITT Mackay San Francisco) transmitters
on 22515 and 17026 kHz - the transmitters are the old "Globe
Wireless / Press Wireless Transmitters used at the South of
San Francisco harbor site near Palo Alto, CA, receiver site at
Half Moon Bay.
Bob was well educated but by the Trade Schools, I don't know
about Hank but they both were experts and they knew what they
were talking about, not just "about" something. That was my
reaction when I saw Bob's book at the Harvard Coop Book Store
in 1977, it was over my budget - probably nearly $40.00 but I
knew he knew what he was talking about, it reeked of "real
knowledge" so I bought it and I never regretted doing so, in
fact I bought his 2nd edition just to read what he said about
Spark and Arc.
Some more info on Palo Alto KFS that had that beautiful bell
shaped tone that is preserved at several of the KPH/KFS
transmitters now in use (except QRT for the duration of the
Pandemic.)
Voice of America: Palo Alto in California
A Story of an International Shortwave Broadcasting Station in
California That Was on the Air During the Intense Days of the
Decisive Pacific War
by Adrian M. Peterson,3/01/2007
Dr. Adrian M. Peterson is a board member of the National
Association of Shortwave Broadcasters. He was born in South
Australia in 1931; since 1944 he has since written several
thousand articles on radio history, which have been published
in 25 languages. He is advisor to the program âWavescanâ and
coordinator of international relations for Adventist World
Radio. He wrote âThe 'Isle of Dreams' Goes Shortwaveâ here
last fall.
This is the second in an occasional series on the stories
behind shortwave broadcasting stations in the United States
and its territories; it is published in cooperation with the
National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters. Some stations
are gone and almost forgotten, others can be heard today.
KROJ QSL card, VOA-OWI
That is the story of an important international shortwave
station that was on the air during the intense days of the
decisive Pacific War. Programming from this station was beamed
south to the Pacific and north to Alaska and it was made up of
relays from OWI-VOA and also AFRS.
We take a look at the known information, admittedly a little
sketchy, about this significant shortwave relay station, and
we begin way back nearly 100 years ago.
Federal Telegraph
There was a maritime wireless station established on Ocean
Beach in San Francisco near what became the southern end of
the Golden Gate Bridge back in the year 1910. During the
American involvement in World War I, this Morse Code wireless
station was taken over by the Navy for naval communication,
and in 1921, it was handed back to Federal Telegraph.
During the following year, another maritime station with
updated electronic equipment was erected further south at a
new location in the marshy areas of the inner harbor at Palo
Alto. At the time, both of these stations were owned by the
Federal Telegraph Company, which also owned a wireless
equipment factory in the Palo Alto area, and both stations
identified on the air in Morse Code as KFS. Over a period of
six years, the maritime wireless communication service from
the older Ocean Beach station was fully phased out in favor of
the newer Palo Alto station.
Soon afterwards, the communication radio station at Palo Alto
was sold to the Mackay Wireless & Cable Company, though
the station still identified on air as KFS. That was its main
call sign, and back in those days, every new channel in the
shortwave spectrum was officially allocated a new three letter
call sign. In the mid 1930s, most of the channel call signs
from Palo Alto Radio were in the KW series, such as KWA, KWB,
KWC, etc.
Immediately after Pearl Harbor, rapid moves were made in the
United States to increase the number of shortwave transmitters
on the air with international radio programming from a dozen
up to about three dozen. In fact, on the West Coast at that
time, there was only one regular station on the air with
international shortwave programming; that was station KGEI, at
Belmont, also south of San Francisco. It is true, special
programs were broadcast from some of the communication
transmitters operated by RCA (Radio Corporation of America) at
Bolinas, but the scheduling was only occasional and spasmodic.
Quite quickly, additional shortwave transmitters were
installed at various locations in California and brought into
service as soon as possible to give international coverage
into the Pacific and Asia, as well as to Australia and New
Zealand.
Among these new stations back in the early days of the Pacific
War were KWID and KWIX at Islais Creek, KRCA and KRCQ at
Bolinas, and an additional unit at Belmont, KGEX. In addition,
two new broadcasting units were made available at KFS, the
Mackay maritime station at Palo Alto, and these identified on
air with the four letter broadcast call signs, KROJ and KROU.
A third unit, KROZ, was quickly commandeered for the surrender
broadcasts in August 1945.
KROJ
The first of these new transmitters at Palo Alto was KROJ, and
according to published information at the time, the
transmitter was a 50 kW Press Wireless unit, manufactured in
the United States, sent to England, and re-imported back into
the United States.
However, another report states that the new KROJ was in
reality an RCA unit, already available, that was quickly
installed at Palo Alto and pressed into service.
Notwithstanding these published reports, experienced radio
personnel in the San Francisco area state that they consider
the new shortwave service was transmitted from communication
units already on the air at the Palo Alto station, and perhaps
modified for broadcast usage.
Experienced international radio monitors in Australia and New
Zealand who tuned in daily to the many shortwave stations in
California during the Pacific War noted the strong signals
from station KROJ and estimated the power output to be at 50
kW. The signal strength surely indicated that the power output
of this strong new station could not be less than 20 kW, and
certainly not at 100 kW.
Without ceremony or prior publicity, transmitter KROJ suddenly
appeared on the shortwave bands with a relay of programming
from VOA, the Voice of America and AFRS, the Armed Forces
Radio Service. The first known monitoring of this new unit was
in Australia in June 1943.
Just prior to Pearl Harbor, OWI, the Office of War Information
in Washington, established a branch office in San Francisco.
The location was 111 Sutter Street, the well known home for
NBC around that era. West Coast programming for the VOA-OWI
transmitters was produced in the Sutter Street studios, and
also in studios established in two hotels on Nob Hill,
Fairmont and Mark Hopkins.
The OWI-VOA office in Sutter Street sent me a copy of their
official schedule for the California stations, effective Aug.
1, 1945, just a few days before the surrender broadcasts. This
schedule included the programming from all of the California
shortwave stations that were active in the VOA network at the
time. These stations were KROJ and KROU, as well as KGEI and
KGEX, KWID and KWIX, KCBA and KCBF, and KNBA/KNBI/KNBX, as
well as the new Hawaiian station KRHO. (Over a period of time,
we hope to look here at the history of all of the shortwave
stations in the United States, including the California
stations.)
This VOA schedule shows such familiar programs from the
wartime era as "World News," "Concert Hall," "Our Marine
Corp," "G.I. Jive" and "Hymns from Home". Commentaries from
major sporting events were also included in their regular
programming. This schedule shows only the English language
programming, and none of the programming on the air in the
foreign languages of Asia and the Pacific.
It is probable that the broadcast call signs for the relay
transmitters at Palo Alto were derived from KRO. The call sign
KRO had been in use previously with the RCA shortwave
communication station at Kahuku on the island of Oahu, Hawaii
and it was recycled into use at Palo Alto in early 1943.
Hence, from communication KRO was derived the broadcast call
signs KROJ, KROU and KROZ.
Footprint
The intended coverage areas for the transmissions from KROJ
were the South Pacific, coastal Asia, New Guinea, Alaska and
the Aleutians. Shortwave frequencies were chosen accordingly,
to ensure propagation at the required distance and at the time
of day in the reception areas.
The signal strength in the target areas was usually very good.
In fact, an army officer serving in North Borneo stated on one
occasion, as reported in a radio magazine in Australia, that
he was hearing the broadcasts from KROJ via a local
medium-wave (AM) station. It is probable that this off-air
relay from KROJ in San Francisco was heard from an AM
medium-wave station located on Labuan Island, North Borneo,
that had been captured from the Japanese just a few days
earlier.
A sister transmitter, KROU, suddenly appeared on the radio
dial in April 1945, equally unheralded and unpublicized.
Programming for this unit was also drawn from VOA and AFRS
sources and beamed to similar areas as KROJ, north to Alaska
and south to the Pacific. The planned scheduling for these two
transmitters was announced ahead of time on air, and in radio
magazines in the United States and Australia, and it was also
sent to listeners in duplicated form.
At the time of the surrender broadcasts from Tokyo Bay in
1945, another Palo Alto transmitter suddenly joined the
network, and this was identified as KROZ. This unit was
already in service with communication traffic across the
Pacific, it was stated, and because of the sudden requirements
at the end of the Pacific War, apparently it was hurriedly
given another broadcast call sign in the Palo Alto sequence
and brought into service. Maybe this call sign with its very
brief usage was even unofficial. Who knows?
Programming from KROZ was in parallel with KROJ. Station KROZ
was on the air for a few days only, and at the most, just a
week or two.
The last known program broadcasts from KROJ and KROU took
place around November or December 1945. The war was over, and
the two new and very large stations, VOA Delano and VOA Dixon,
both in California, were already being phased into service.
The temporary units at Palo Alto were no longer needed for
broadcast service, and we would guess that they were quietly
taken back into the regular communication service from Radio
Palo Alto, station KFS.
The total time of on-air service from KROJ/KROU/KROZ was less
than 1-1/2 years, and they vanished as they began, unheralded
and unannounced.
NØUF has this on his website which I believe is part of what
used to be posted on our website. He quotes "World Radio" June
1988.
June, 1988 Worldradio page 62
Sideswiper Net by Bob Shrader, W6BNB
The Society of Amateur Radio Operators (SARO), formed in 1937
in the San Francisco Bay Area, has recently reached back into
the far distant past to come up with a "Sideswiper Net."
Old-timers may know what a sideswiper is, but for the younger
members of the fraternity, it is a key that operates somewhat
like a bug or an electronic keyer. On such keys - as you
probably know - a push of the thumb produces a series of dots,
and a push of the first finger produces a dash on a bug, or a
series of dashes with an electronic keyer. But the sideswiper,
or "cootie" key, makes a dash with either the thumb or first
finger.
To make a dot, you just tap either side of the paddle(s)
lightly. To make two dots, you tap first the left side and
then the right side. To make an "S" you tap left-right-left,
or you may make it by tapping right-left-right, and so on. For
a "K" you can make a dash with the finger, a dot with the
thumb, and the second dash with the finger; or again, you can
reverse it and make a dash with the thumb, dot with the finger
and dash with the thumb.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well it isn't. If you don't believe
me, try it.
To try to send with a cootie key, you can use one of several
types of keys. One of the easiest is to use an electronic key
paddle that has a center lead and two outside leads (to the
right and left contacts). By tying these two outside leads
together, the center and outside leads make up a cootie key
circuit. Or you can homebrew a short piece of hacksaw blade
held at one end above a base board, that can be pushed against
a contact to the right or against a contact to the left.
You can fashion your own paddle out of a piece of 1/8" 3-ply
and glue or bolt it to the end of the hacksaw blade. You can
also bolt two hand keys together, base-to-base, and fix them
so the bases are at 90º from a wooden - or better yet, a heavy
metal - base.
By far the simplest cootie key is made by tying the end of the
vibrating end of a bug to its backstop with a rubber band so
that the rod cannot move off of the backstop. Then with the
thumb pushed to its stop, adjust the dot contact until it
makes a solid electrical connection - and you have an
excellent working sideswiper.
These keys were used 100 years ago by telegraphers, and later
by the early-day radio operators. Around the '30s they began
to disappear, and it is unusual to hear an old-timer pounding
brass on a sidewinder any more. Once in a while you will hear
one, probably on 40 or 80 M. They have a distinctive sound
because it is extremely hard to make similar dots with both
thumb and first finger, or similar dashes with thumb and
finger. In most cases, a computer will not copy transmissions
made by cootie key because of the "swing" of the sending. It
tends to separate the men from the boys as operators. You
usually can't cheat by copying cootie key operators with a
computer; you have to be able to read the stuff by ear.
Actually, it requires many hours of practice on THE QUICK
BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOGS BACK 1234567890.?, BT AR
AS and SK before an operator dares to put his sending on the
air. However, if you are one who enjoys a challenge, you will
find your match in a sideswiper.
The SARO Sideswiper Net is on 3668.5 kHz at 9 a.m. Pacific
Time on Tuesday mornings if you are interested and live in the
central California area. If out of the area, you might try
setting up a net of your own, if you can find any people crazy
enough to check in with you.
It is a little painful to transmit with these keys. It is
surprising how hard it is for an old-time bug or electronic
key operator to train the part of his brain that the cootie
key operates from. That old thumb just won't make dashes
correctly!
I thought some would enjoy a bit of history. Nice memories
from our departed cootie pioneers!
73
DR Dave Ring N1EA