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January 2026
MRHS Newsletter No. 101
Dedicated to True Believers Afloat & Ashore
After Action Report: KPH Cryptography Broadcast
President Dillman/RD Featured on Podcast
True Believer Profile: Roland Williams
Aerial Surveillance of Bolinas Radio
Amazing Tales of the Golden Age of Wireless
“I’ll give it a try, but that’s all I can do.”
Mike Payne/MP Returns to the Key!
"In the Finest Traditions of the Service ..."
| | After Action Report: KPH Cryptography Broadcast | | True Believer Mike Ledermueller turned the KPH ENIGMA Broadcast into a family event! Here we see his two sons working hard as "Code Breakers" as they decode the message on a replica ENIGMA machine. It was a great history learning experience, too! | | |
Once again cryptographers were huddled over their receivers (or, increasingly, computers connected to Software Defined Radios accessible via the Internet) copying an encoded message transmission broadcast by the “Wireless Giant of the Pacific,” historic maritime radio coast station KPH. On Saturday, August 30 2025 at 2000 GMT KPH broadcast an encrypted message in the famous ENIGMA format. Here is the imaginative scenario for the broadcast:
The year is 1939. War looms over Europe like a gathering storm. And deep within the quiet halls of a remote country estate, a small, secretive group of the Allies’ brightest minds works tirelessly to pierce the veil of the German military’s most complex encryption device - the Enigma machine. In just three weeks, a critical radio transmission is expected to be sent in Morse code: a stream of meaningless five-letter groups, indecipherable to ordinary listeners but believed to contain plans of the highest importance. Intelligence believes the message may detail the movement of German forces in a way that could change the course of the war before it has even truly begun.
In a daring operation that cost brave agents and precious resources, a codebook has been wrestled from enemy hands. It is stained, scarred by fire…and perhaps incomplete, but it is the best chance we have. You are now part of the small team entrusted with this task. The clock is ticking; every day that passes brings the transmission closer, and once it arrives, you must work with speed and precision to decode its secrets. The fate of ships at sea, soldiers in the field, and perhaps the fate of nations rests in your hands.
Time is of the essence - crack the code before it’s too late!
KPH Cryptography Manager Kevin McGrath/KM provided the following information concerning this latest event. Thanks, KM! Also, a word of thanks to Maintenance Supervisor Bill Ruck/RK, who once again handled the issuance of the coveted award certificates.
This year a particular dose or realism was added to the exercise when a major solar flare erupted at the very beginning of the broadcast, interfering with efforts to copy the message by intercept stations around the world! Despite that significant handicap 160 decodes were submitted for verification. Of that number there were 141 successful decodes. Well done to all those who submitted entries and congratulations to all who were able to decode the message and were awarded a certificate!
Entries were received from stations all across the USA, but also from Canada, England, France, Germany, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Czech Rep., Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. While 40% of listeners copied the message from their home stations another 60% used one of the many Software Defined Radios accessible via the Internet. A number of stations used vintage receivers such as the Collins R390A, RCA RBC-2, Mackey 3020a.
Noteworthy is that one station used an original World War 2 era ENIGMA machine. Eleven other stations used replica ENIGMA machines. This is of particular interest in that for the 2022 ENIGMA cryptography event only two stations used replica machines. Most participants used one of the several simulators that are available on the Internet or as standalone apps.
Once operators copied the message they then needed to begin the effort to decode the message using the codebook page provided. To add to the challenge this codebook page was stained and scarred by fire. In fact, The code book page was purposely designed such that the date is missing and one of the plugboard pairs is ambiguous.
Here is the encrypted ENIGMA message as broadcast by KPH:
KAPT REINEKE FR GR ADM RAEDER
2312 MAY 27 = 120 = JXY LYI
=
BSTHH GMBOA WGOCL FRCYT VQHDB
TIAUJ ILARX NKQWV HVTXM VJGCF
ZYUGP ZBBZW VLQFR ODBBC PPBDK
XBWTZ MXKGP JAFKA QKKFU UULYV
WXUZK DUFXW FZOFT QXKFS
And here is the decoded message:
KAPITAN REINEKE FROM GRAND ADMIRAL RAEDER
=
BEGIN PLANNING CROSS CHANNEL OP X
OBJECTIVE ENGLISH MAINLAND X
DETAIL NAVAL AND AIR SUPPORT REQS X
CODE WORD SEALION X
REPORT IN FIVE DAYS X
As an historical note, “Operation Sea Lion” was the codename for German plans to invade Great Britain during World War 2.
Here is a small sample of some of the comments received from participants of the event:
- Thanks for arranging this interesting activity. My first time.
- These challenges have been some of my all-time favorite on-air activities.
- Got up at 5am in Australia!
- Thank you all so much for putting on this event — it’s one of my very favorite events of the year
- This was my first time interacting with KPH and it was a blast. Thank you to all the volunteers who put this event together!
- Thank you for running this event. I always look forward to them.
- It's been a very long wait since 2023 but worth every minute, many thanks for another extraordinary opportunity.
- Thank you for an excellent activity and keeping history vibrant
- Sailed as RO on French tankers (Shell and BP). Used a McKay RX to listen to Enigma transmission.
- Good experience for my eventual transfer to Hut 6 at Blechley to work with Flowers and Turing.
- We are the Royal Canadian Sea Cadet Corps. Thanks!
- My boys had a lot of fun pretending to be codebreakers. Nice history lesson too.
- This rocked! Thank you so much.
- Hope more is to come. Thanks to all at MRHS. This was a great exercise and really fun!
- Thanks to all for organizing this neat and engaging event
- QSA5 on 22 MHz in Puerto Rico
Click Here to see the scene at the Point Reyes receive site as the broadcast begins.
Randy Hall, K7AGE in Gold Beach OR created an excellent video of the broadcast. Click Here to copy the ENIGMA message (Including the audio of the Teletype format broadcast of the message)!
And here is Randy’s video documenting his efforts to decode the message. This video is a very helpful tutorial for those new to decrypting ENIGMA messages.
By any measure this latest ENIGMA broadcast was a tremendous success. Stay tuned for our next cryptography event. We will keep you posted here in your MRHS Newsletter!
| | President Dillman/RD Featured on Podcast | | Since we last went to press our very own MRHS President Richard Dillman/RD appeared on a podcast dedicated to "making" and technical topics of interest to ham radio operators. RD offers a wonderful telling of the story of KPH and how the MRHS was founded, as well as information about the recent ENIGMA broadcast. To see and hear this fascinating story, CLICK the image above! | | True Believer Profile: Roland Williams | | |
On any given Saturday the doors of Bolinas Radio and the Point Reyes Receive Site are opened to the public. In recent years the number of visitors has grown exponentially. It is a diverse group. Some are just curious, perhaps having just visited the famous "Cypress Tree Tunnel" which was created by RCA when the station was constructed. Some are looking for a bathroom. Some are completing a pilgrimage that may have taken them many miles or even many days or years, crossing continents and oceans. For most it is a one time visit that we hope is memorable. But sometimes someone wanders in and keeps coming back. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes for years. Sometimes for decades. Who are these, as we affectionately refer to them (and ourselves!) as "radio squirrels." We thought it might be interesting on occasion to let them tell their own story,
Now here comes Roland Williams and his fascinating story ...
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Seeking KPH – A Journey Through the Wilderness.
First, some background. Radio was a fascination for me ever since 1966 when, as a young teenager in the Welsh valleys (GW-land), I built a “Two Valve Short Wave Radio” from an article by G3OGR in a Hobbies Annual 1966 edition. Sometimes there is no substitute for good fortune and an accidentally good antenna, because when I switched on the radio for the first time, painfully tight headphones crushing my ears, the dulcet tones of Shannon Air Radio rose through the aether. I was hooked! The worst of the callouses from learning to solder were still fresh on my fingers, but the excitement of the moment will live forever in my mind. As an aside, I was later to learn that, though testing a 9v transistor radio battery (PP3 to those in the know) using ones tongue, the same technique applied to a 67 volt battery is extraordinarily unpleasant.
My electrical education was spurred by a gift from a family friend of several boxes of components and a book about radio after they saw my homebrew effort, though my mother was not at all certain that any of this was suitable for a youngster but she decided it was better than girls! A subscription to Practical Wireless and shortly after, Practical Television, along with a “19 set” purchased for the significant sum of £1-19s-6d (one pound, nineteen shillings and sixpence, a hair under £2) and countless weeks making it better by following instructions from an earlier edition of Practical Wireless put me in the realm of being able to spell radio, valves (tubes) and high voltage.
My college choice really defined a lot of my later life and I went to a school in North Wales that had a good radio track record and that was where I learned enough Morse Code to pass the test for an amateur license.
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Anglesey Radio/GLV in the early 1970's
My encounter with Anglesey Radio (GLV) was my first exposure to a commercial shore station and it was a decidedly close shave – the examining officer stood over my shoulder and told me I needed to get one more letter correct to get a passing score, jabbing his finger onto a long word in a way that created a missing word space so that I was able to fill in the next few letters to give me “submarine.” Just over a week later, in the mail arrived a deluge of paper declaring that I should henceforth be accorded the A license GW4BGD.
After a varied career in which radio played a pretty oversized part, I found myself in 2017 mostly retired in northern California, having operated as VE6ANE and VR2HL before acquiring AE6VL in about 2000. In keeping with my happy accumulation of assorted certifications, I scored a GROL (ed: the commercial General Radiotelephone Operator License) not long after, in 2003, complete with Radar endorsement.
The Covid period pushed me to find stuff to work on in my copious free time (yeah, right!) and discovered that there were still some museum ships with working radio rooms but travel wasn’t possible so that petered out as an activity prospect. The “Aha!” moment came listening to a now defunct podcast Ditdit.fm in January of 2020. Episode 27 was the edition where Richard Dillman was interviewed and the story of KPH unwrapped. (To hear this excellent podcast Click Here). In the latter part of that year, my wife was away for a few days at some horse event and I was listening again to this episode and it occurred to me that this was not too far to drive and so I visited and met up with Richard and some of the other ops. My interest was clear and I got to see the “Treasure Room” where I recognized a few old friends amongst the radios, and at that point Richard called the Bolinas folk and I drove down to see around the transmitter hall – thanks Steve (Transmitter Manager Steve Hawes/SH), you made the day for me.
I made a start at studying for element 6 (ed: the technical theory test to acquire the Radiotelegraph Operator License — the fabled “T” Ticket) over that following winter, but some part-time work suddenly became much more full time and family things took up more time so the studying collapsed in flames. By now I was spending a lot of time with the Long Island CW Club (LICW) and so my Morse was getting tidied up. In late May of 2023, just after Hamvention (ed: the largest ham radio gathering in the USA, held each year in Ohio in May), my nephew visited from the East coast where he had just completed his one year study-abroad period and in early June we visited KPH again. He was very excited by this visit and we added the General and Extra licenses to his US tickets (amateur radio license) the following week. I was encouraged too; I dug into the studies a bit more and decided that the T-license was a practical goal at this point.
Eventually in late 2024 I had managed to get a few of my LICW buddies interested and we started a few rounds of getting some code practice going but most dropped out. Two stayed the course, but they were grandfathered for their Morse tests with the Extra license exception. I already had Element 1 written done and knocked out Element 6 quickly in March of 2025. They both managed their written tests by mid May, earning T-193 and T-195 (Radiotelegraph Operator Licenses have sequential serial numbers — a licensee’s serial number is a certain point of pride) beating me to the punch easily. It was Memorial Day by the time I completed the two Morse Code tests, to find myself the driver of T-196 and the inherited Ships Radar endorsement from my GROL. In my defense, I managed a clean sheet (perfect score!) for the element 6 test so I didn’t feel too bad.
I enjoy the hardware repair side of radios as much if not more than I do the driving side of things, so KPH is a great blend of being able to spend a couple of weekends a month doing what I really enjoy with like-minded folk that have a most eclectic set of tales and experiences. My tendency to being verbose can be irritating, but it seems to play well with visitors to the station. My LICW buddies have accused me of giving TED-talks in our QRQ (High speed Morse Code) classes, and that’s not lost on me. I’m a bug (a mechanical semiautomatic telegraph key) user and equally happy with both right and left-handed bugs. My personal goal is to get my copy-speed up to a comfortable 30wpm, but I don’t type and my handwriting is, well, rough at that speed. I have some distance to go, I fear.
In the meanwhile, I’d like to thank all the crew for welcoming me to their station and for the encouragement and comradeship they have extended to me.
| | P.S. Read my own old QSL card carefully – notice the frequency is in megacycles and the preprinted date segment is 197x. The house is still there, but my aerial isn’t and we sold it in 2020 after my mother passed on. Oh, yes, the girls thing … one of the moms in the village inquired of my mother if I was open to dating her daughter (had I known I would have have definitely taken her up on the offer) but my mother said “Roland isn’t interested in girls, he’s always too busy playing with his radios in the shed!” I can only imagine that she would have taken this latest adventure as simply validating her original proclamation. | | Aerial Surveillance of Bolinas Radio | | True Believer Robert Brown/RB took to the air on a beautiful day last September to do some aerial surveillance of Bolinas Radio. Fortunately, on that day the dreaded "marine layer" of fog (Think Mark Twain's famous saying that the coldest winter he ever endured was a summer in San Francisco!) was out to sea. In the second image you can clearly see the RCA era transmitter building where KPH/KFS/K6KPH are housed. The antennas are in the fields to the front and left of the building. Thanks RB for the great pictures! | | |
Amazing Tales of the Golden Age of Wireless:
WCC, RMS Berengaria, and the Prince of Wales.
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An interesting article from “Radio & Television News” of February 1950 offers a glimpse at another amazing tale from the golden age of wireless, related to RCA’s coast station on Cape Cod, WCC. The WCC receive site was at Chatham (which is now the home of our colleagues of the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center) and the transmitter site was further west on the mainland at Marion, MA). True Believers all know that the major marine radio coast stations had transmitter and receiver sites at different locations to prevent the transmitters from overpowering the receivers. In order to do this there needed to be some sort of landline connection between the two sites to allow the operators at the receive site to key the transmitters at the remote location. For example, at KPH RCA maintained its own private landline between the receive site at Point Reyes and the Bolinas transmitter site. The same was true for RCA at Cape Cod. Today that connection at KPH is made by a standard landline telephone connection (think dial-up Internet connections from back in the day).
The narrator of the article now relates this fascinating, telling, story about early maritime radio history:
Marion and Chatham became the scene of many record-book events … recalling the incident which has become a legend in brass-pounding history. In 1927, when the Prince of Wales was on his way to this country aboard the (RMS) BERENGARIA, a severe windstorm broke contact at several points between Chatham and Marion. The break, coming at an hour when message traffic to and from the British liner was at its peak, caused a near panic. "With 300 messages waiting to be radioed to the vessel …one of the crack operators, carrying his telegraph key, set out through the gusty night, feeling his way in the dark from pole to pole until he spotted the break nearest Marion. He connected his telegraph key into the line, and in this unorthodox manner, proceeded to operate the Marion station transmitter, until the last of the messages had reached the Berengaria.”
In the finest traditions of the service …
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The Gales of November Remembered:
"I'll give it a try, but that is all I can do."
| | November 10, 2025 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the loss of SS EDMUND FITZGERALD on Lake Superior while carrying a load of iron ore from Superior, Wisconsin to Detroit. This tragic event was memorialized in the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” which was a major hit single for Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. Through this song the events of that tragic night became known to a very wide audience, However, what the song does not mention is the true unsung hero of that fateful night: Captain Bernie Cooper of the SS ARTHUR M ANDERSON. | | |
While the Maritime Radio Historical Society is primarily focused on the history of high seas maritime communications using Morse Code, radio was also used by Great Lakes shipping concerns from a very early point in the history of wireless. Early on there were Morse stations that served the Great Lakes. In 1932, the Radio Corporation of America, the company that operated WCC on Cape Cod and KPH at Bolinas, also maintained four stations on the Great Lakes: Duluth (WRL), Chicago (WGO), Cleveland (WCY), and Buffalo (WBL). By 1939 the FCC no longer required Great Lakes shipping to carry Morse operators as more communications were conducted over radio telephone, which continues to this day. All that to say, the history of maritime radio on the Great Lakes is an important, yet lesser studied, aspect of the history of communications.
SS ARTHUR ANDERSON was sailing near the SS EDMUND FITZGERALD on that fateful day as both ships fought a massive storm to achieve the safety of Whitefish Bay. However, before reaching safe harbor the FITZGERALD disappeared from the radar screen on the ANDERSON. The ANDERSON tried to contact the FITZGERALD but there was only radio silence … It was then that Captain Cooper made contact with the US Coast Guard station at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, which coordinated search and rescue on the Great Lakes. Fortunately, audio transcripts of those radio transmissions have been preserved.
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“Anderson, this is Group Soo. What is your present position?”
“We’re down here, about two miles off Parisienne Island right now…the wind is northwest forty to forty-five miles here in the bay.”
“Is it calming down at all, do you think?”
“In the bay it is, but I heard a couple of the salties talking up there, and they wish they hadn’t gone out.”
“Do you think there is any possibility and you could…ah…come about and go back there and do any searching?”
“Ah…God, I don’t know…ah…that…that sea out there is tremendously large. Ah…if you want me to, I can, but I’m not going to be making any time; I’ll be lucky to make two or three miles an hour going back out that way.”
“Well, you’ll have to make a decision as to whether you will be hazarding your vessel or not, but you’re probably one of the only vessels right now that can get to the scene. We’re going to try to contact those saltwater vessels and see if they can’t possibly come about and possibly come back also…things look pretty bad right now; it looks like she may have split apart at the seams like the Morrell did a few years back.”
“Well, that’s what I been thinking. But we were talking to him about seven and he said that everything was going fine. He said that he was going along like an old shoe; no problems at all.”
“Well, again, do you think you could come about and go back and have a look in the area?”
“Well, I’ll go back and take a look, but God, I’m afraid I’m going to take a hell of a beating out there… I’ll turn around and give ‘er a whirl, but God, I don’t know. I’ll give it a try.”
“That would be good.”
“Do you realize what the conditions are out there?”
“Affirmative. From what your reports are I can appreciate the conditions. Again, though, I have to leave that decision up to you as to whether it would be hazarding your vessel or not. If you think you can safely go back up to the area, I would request that you do so. But I have to leave the decision up to you.”
“I’ll give it a try, but that’s all I can do.”
And he did …
Captain Cooper turned his ship, also loaded with iron ore, and headed back out from the safety of sheltering harbor and into the storm.
They found only some floating debris …
But they went out … They set aside concern for their own welfare to try to save fellow mariners in distress.
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(CLICK the above image to hear the actual recording of the radio traffic)
Captain Cooper and the crew of the SS ARTHUR M ANDERSON were the unsung heroes of that tragic night on a storm tossed Lake Superior. And once again Marconi’s dream was realized to seek to preserve the safety of life at sea thanks to wireless communciations. Once again maritime radio came to the aid of those in peril on the sea. On this anniversary we honor their memory.
In the finest traditions of the service ...
| | Mike Payne/MP Returns to the Key! | | |
True Believers will recall that one of the most dedicated members of the Operations Department at SANFRANCISCORADIO/KPH/KFS over many years has been Mike Payne/MP. MP was a Radioman in the United States Navy, serving during the Viet Nam war, and also in the United States Coast Guard. When it comes to coast station radio operators MP is the real deal. For years he has helped to preserve maritime radio history by being at his classic World War One vintage Vibroplex Blue Racer “bug” key, sitting the circuit at KPH/KFS/K6KPH. Amateur radio operators around the world have come to know MP by his “fist” — his way of sending Morse Code. And Mike is not just a great operator, but his enthusiasm, dedication, and spirit of simply having fun have encouraged and helped to brighten the day of all of us in the Operations Department.
A while ago MP faced some very serious health challenges. But recently, after a long absence, he was able to rejoin us at Point Reyes to sit the circuit once again at Position Five. But this time he needed to learn to send Morse with his non-dominant hand using a standard straight key.
And he did.
His example of dedication is an inspiration to us all. Welcome home, MP!
In the finest traditions of the service ...
| | "In the Finest Traditions of the Service ..." | | | | |
