History of KFS

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

History of KFS:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160316030259/http://wikimapia.org/18873/Fomer-Maritime-and-VOA-Station-KFS-KROJ

Former Maritime and VOA Station, KFS/KROJ (Palo Alto, California)
USA / California / East Palo Alto / Palo Alto, California / East Bayshore Road, 2501
 radiocommunication
Former Maritime and VOA Station, KFS/KROJ

History of KFS:

The KFS story begins with the Beach Station (Ocean Beach), which was put into operation in July 1910 by the Poulsen Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company. The Beach Station was located just north of the San Francisco zoo at 48th Avenue and Noriega Street.

The Dollar Steamship company formed DOLLARADIO in 1929 (in 1930 becoming Globe Wireless) to handle their ship-to-shore communications. Dollar's first shore station was constructed at Mussel Rock about 15 miles south of San Francisco near the north end of of Pacifica. Eventually, Globe opened their facilities to the public and to communicate with ships of any line.

The 200 acre Half Moon Bay facility on the coast near Lobitos Creek, "LO", was constructed in 1932 by the Mackay Radio and Telegraph Co. as the receive site for maritime radio station KFS and point-to-point station KTK. (The transmit site for KFS and KTK, "MX", was established in the Palo Alto bayland marsh.) Operations from Ocean Beach and Mussel Rock were all moved to the new facilities. The International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) subsequently purchased the stations and operated them for many years. Eventually, in the early 1990s, ITT sold KFS (KTK had ceased operations) to a group of local investors. These investors also obtained, from the Tropical Radio and Telegraph company (TRT), station WNU near Slidell, Louisiana and, from the United States government, the former Voice of America sites near Dixon, California. This was the beginning of a modernized HF network, reusing the name Globe Wireless.

The last commercial radiotelegraph transmission in North America was keyed from LO and transmitted from MX at 2359 UTC on July 12, 1999. The final words transmitted by KFS? "What hath God wrought". By the turn of the century, the Half Moon Bay facility had become the central control, database server farm, and west coast receive site for the Globe Wireless HF data and email network providing GlobeEmail and GlobeData services to 40,000 commercial shipping vessels from stations at 23 worldwide sites. When Inmarsat purchased Globe Wireless in December 2013, the HF portion of the operation was retained as Globe Wireless Radio Services.

www.balearntofly.com/links/bay-area-history.html --
"Well, faithful readers, the landmarks are getting a little more obscure and harder to research, but that just makes them all the more interesting! This month I'm going to talk about the "antenna farm", which from the air looks like a bunch of toothpicks stuck in the middle of the marsh just southeast of the PAO 31 runway near Highway 101. From the ground (the facility is a very short walk from East Bayshore Rd) you realize just how many antennas there are and how tall they are.

"On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph and the code bearing his name, sent the first message by telegraph. "What hath God wrought" (from Numbers 23:23) was sent along 35 miles of steel wire from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. Since then Morse Code has been used extensively for long distance communication - first by wire, and then by radio. Even when HF and VHF radios became ubiquitous in the early 1900s, Morse Code retained its usefulness. Because the Morse Code signal is so much simpler than voice or data, it can be sent using very little bandwidth (using a technique called Continuous Wave, or "CW") and can be heard even through severe atmospheric interference. It can also be heard much further than voice using the same amount of power. These advantages together made Morse Code the standard for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication for nearly 100 years.

"In 1910, the Federal Telegraph Company was formed in San Francisco to build a large radio station on the beach near what is now the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. That station, call sign KFS, initially consisted of a single spark wireless transmitter for communication in Morse Code, although additional transmitters were added rapidly. After the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, all ships were required to have Morse Code equipment on board and a radio operator on duty 24 hours a day. Thus started an 80-year long era of ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication. Federal Telegraph was one of many companies that provided commercial communication service, charging companies by the message.

"KFS was taken over by the U.S. Navy during World War I to allow communication with U.S. battleships. The station was moved in 1921 to the marsh just east of Palo Alto (the current "antenna farm"), and the San Francisco station was closed in 1927. Around this time the station was also sold to Mackay Cable & Wireless. In July, 1943, a new 50KW transmitter was activated at KFS under the callsign KROJ and provided a relay service for the Voice of America. This service was terminated in 1945 at the end of World War II.

"The exact corporate history of the site after WWII is impossible to ascertain (at least by me), but during the next 30 years it was owned by ITT World Communications (which eventually called the site Palo Alto Radio) and then KFS World Communications. The site still contains an old, unused mailbox with the ITT name on it at the front gate.

"For the engineers among us, the antennas include twelve full-wave dipoles, two inverted cones, and a loaded vertical. Seventeen transmitters were in use for CW. KFS built a separate receive site six miles south of Half Moon Bay. If you've ever been doing emergency landing practice in those fields south along the coast from HAF, and noticed a whole bunch of tall antennas near your favorite field, they are the KFS receive antennas. The receive antennas include three log-periodic dipole arrays, several wire V-beams, and several rhombics.

"ITT had transferred much of the Palo Alto site to the city in 1977 and held an easement for their continued operation. In January 1994, Palo Alto bought the easement from KFS for $370,000, thus securing one of the last remaining large pieces of the baylands not under the city's control. There are currently no plans to renovate or demolish the site, although in 1994 there were some rumors about turning the large radio building into a youth hostel. Obviously this hasn't happened yet.

"In 1995, the U.S. Coast Guard officially stopped listening for Morse Code distress calls. KFS sold the Half Moon Bay facility to Globe Wireless, a company specializing in maritime communications (including email and telefax) using satellite and HF communications. With the newly available communications technology, they decommissioned all Morse Code transmissions. The last commercial radiotelegraph transmission in North America was made from the Palo Alto site at 2359 UTC on July 12, 1999. The final words transmitted by KFS? "What hath God wrought"."


www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0106/t.2243.html -- Article about KFS during its VOA days.
www.voanews.com/english/portal.cfm
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   37°26'41"N   122°6'45"W

From the discussion on the C...@mailman.qth.net email list.

73

DR

[Bart Lee]

Hello, DR, Best wishes for the New Year!  (and to all!!)

You write:

"The last commercial radiotelegraph transmission in North America was keyed from LO and transmitted from MX at 2359 UTC on July 12, 1999. The final words transmitted by KFS? "What hath God wrought". "

Well, not quite.  Paul Zell was the operator.  A group of us attended the sign-off, sad and we thought final. 

And then...  A Mexican ship came up on frequency!  She asked in effect:  "What do you mean this is the last transmission?  We need you!"

Paul responded on frequency.  Then, things got quiet.  And, alas, have stayed quiet.

RD, Richard Dillman of now KPH attended, and many others,  I have an audio tape somewhere.

73 de Bart, K6VK ##

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Bart Lee, K6VK, CHRS Archivist and Fellow, AWA Fellow, ARRL Liaison

Texts only to: 415 902 7168 

www.bartlee.com 

{KV6LEE(at)gmail(dot)com} ##

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[Richard Singer]

Bart, 

Your email pertaining to KFS. I would love to hear KFS signal when they called up for TFC List on 500 KHz. All those years sailing I never recorded their signal. When they started A2 CW I understand the modulator was hooked to a motor. There was a slow whine when it started. Do you have a recording of that?

73 

Dick/K6KSG

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[JOE ALLEN]

DR, Bart, and the group,

Thanks for sharing the historical information about KFS. I was an operator at the station from 1978-1980. It was a dream job for a kid just out of high school.

During my tenure, KFS operated from the lower level of the building at the receiving site building (about 6 miles south of Half Moon Bay, CA). The antenna farm was impressive and well placed on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean. The HF positions used ITT 2010A receivers with split headphones. Each operator could listen to two calling bands simultaneously. 

Three 2010A receivers were stacked vertically at each HF operating position. The receivers tuning knobs were connected together with mechanical gears and a belt. This enabled the operator to tune all three receivers simultaneously with a single tuning knob. The gears were mounted to the front of the mailing tuning knob shaft of each receiver - and the diameter of the gears varied according to the bandwidth of each calling band. By using the correct gear ratio, an operator could tune the 3 receivers, listen for calls, and reach endpoints of the calling bands simultaneously. 

In time, Watkins Johnson receivers (WJ-8716 I believe) replaced the tube-type ITT 2010A receivers. Toward the end of my tenure, the station was implementing SITOR and the entire operation was being moved upstairs. I remember doing SITOR tests with WSL from the upstairs position just prior to my departure. 

I have many fond memories of those days - and tremendous gratitude for John Brundage (SK) the KFS station manager who gave me my start in maritime communications...

73 to all,

JA/N0MU

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[Bart Lee]

Hi Dick,

Nice to hear from you and we trust you are OK.   We at CHRS are proceeding with getting the Society of Wireless Pioneers archives out into cyberspace.  Deputy Archivist Bob Rydzewski is doing most of the work.

Re KFS and its last transmission:  What I did was record the audio in the room.  It is not an air-check. I will keep looking for that tape.

73 de Bart, K6VK ##

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Bart Lee

Texts only to: 415 902 7168 

www.bartlee.com 

{KV6LEE(at)gmail(dot)com} ##

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[Bart Lee]

Hi Joe, thanks for your informative comment. The 1999 event was, as I recall, on the lower floor.  I'm not sure, but I think that AIRINC may have adopted the antennas for communications with commercial aircraft coming in over the Pacific.  I used to listen to them do the hand-offs to the SF area airports by giving them the VHF frequencies.

73 de Bart, K6VK ##

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Bart Lee

Texts only to: 415 902 7168 

www.bartlee.com 

{KV6LEE(at)gmail(dot)com} ##

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/radio-officers/6A985485-9200-4108-8C7B-E5E57D630DD0%40aol.com.

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

All I have Dick Singer, is a recording of KFS sending the ARA PX.

https://archive.org/details/KFS_SendingAraPxMay141989

I don't think I ever heard KFS sending with modulation but the RCA boys in Chatham told me their "modulation" was a motor which introduced ripple. K1WT, Wally Turzyn was one of the transmitter technicians, I could ask him tomorrow if I remember - I am at the forgetting age in life.

Dick, I just read one of the reviews on the SOS recording I put up on archive.org, and one fellow is saying that he sent out a DDD SOS DDD from NMC on October 4, 1980 - if he did (and I said this in my reply) I must have been asleep - no, I mean literally, I was asleep when the autoalarm bells went off. so anything prior to the SOS from PJTA (ms PRINSENDAM) I never hear, except I have listened to the recording of the XXX that PJTA said.  This fellow says he sent a relay SOS and there's nothing in the  summaries I have and the teletype traffic I have about that.  He (he used the pseudonym " themac60 ") mentioned Bryan Fisher.  He was upset because he thinks I deliberately didn't mention that PJTA sent an SOS prior to the one I heard and prefixed it with NMC's call sign.  I never knew about that because I wasn't on watch then, I'm guessing that PJTA didn't send an auto alarm for that SOS - and none of the teletype traffic seems to mention that - or if it does, I just thought it was the "main" SOS that I heard and many others heard.  I looked up the messages that mentioned Bryan Fisher in the googlegroups archive and I see a long discussion with Richard Monjure - who no longer subscribes to this list.   It's here:  https://groups.google.com/g/radio-officers/c/R73UUkj2xiA/m/ypodnbCb33oJ It is completly confusing to me and I can barely understand what "themac60" is saying but reading it again it seems that after PJTA got moved off of 500 kHz with NOJ that PJTA got frustrated with NOJ - and what the Chief Radio Officer of PJTA Jack A.A. van der Zee told me is that NOJ told him to send an SOS.  What "themac60" seems to be saying is that PJTA actually sent another SOS - unfortunately "themac60" accuses me - or someone - of altering the recording, I didn't and it seems to be exactly what I heard that night - but of course there was more before that on 500 kHz that I don't have a recording of, and that I have no recollection of because I was literally sleeping as it was past midnight.

Anyway if anyone could read the comments on Archive.org and piece together the pieces, it might be interesting.  Here's the page: https://archive.org/details/SosMsPrinsendamOctober41980

73

DR

N1EA

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

Here's  some Google Earth screen captures of the Transmit and Receive sites of KFS.

Transmitter site, 2601 E BAYSHORE RD, PALO ALTO, CA 94303

KFS Receive Site, Lobitos Creek Rd, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019

73

DR

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

Not that it matters much, but I had used GIMP to add a label to the photo and forgot to upload it to the email list, the Facebook group radio-officers got the picture below.