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Using Cw in the Navy
When I joined the Navy in 1962, I could already receive code at 40wpm. So when I attended radio school, & graduated first in the class, I was allowed to pick any duty assignment in the world. I picked Whidbey Island to be near home. Big mistake. I got Whidbey Island Naval Station but I was attached to a Seaplane Tender out of Whidbey Island. I was soon to learn that Whidbey Island was home base for a large Naval Seaplane Squadron. Then I was put on a plane for a 3 day trip to meet the ship in Okinawa. A six month deployment overseas. Big surpise. But the biggest surprise was yet to come a year later. I spent that first six months overseas taking CW position reports from Seaplanes while they tracked submarines. After six months of using a hand key, I had had enough of that already!!! When we went back to the states for some R&R, I bought an old Les Logan speed key. Cut off the dot arm so there was some free space at the rear of the modified key for an electronic keyer. I built a transistor multi-vibrator keyer taken from QST magazine -- onto the back of that Les Logan. With a relay output so it could key the ships high voltage keying lines. The good part was the easy way to change the speed when required. Then I took the Navy speed key test. They didn’t make it easy to use a speed key and you had to provide your own key. That next 6 months overseas was a piece of cake using the electronic keyer --sometimes up to 16 hours a day during operations. But then we got hit with the really big surprise. After the first rocket attack on the Army barracks near Saigon, our ship got underway for DaNang to set up a Seadrone. Using Seaplanes to patrol the Viet Nam coast line for gun runners. Which meant 16 hours a day of nerve racking operations. We set up Seadrones all around the coast line of Viet Nam till I finally ended my association with the Navy in 1967. I left the Navy as an Radioman Second Class. In 1967 the Navy decommissioned the 3 Seaplane Tenders in the Pacific and that marked the end of the use of Seaplanes. That four years was such a difficult time, I took the key and threw it in the trash soon after my discharge. So, no picture of that key…. but I will post some Seaplane pictures later. Your probably wondering why I didnt just use a speed key on Naval circuits. The Seaplane radio operators were Airdales and most of them couldnt send or receive over 12 wpm. And no speed key can be adjusted that slow. Plus, the Navy keying lines on those old tube transmitters caused quite a shock if you came across the contacts -- such as can happen when your moving weights on the dot arm. I only used CW for one year in the Navy. After the top secret clearance came through, I spent the next 3 yrs working in the only room aboard ship that was air conditioned. The Crypto Center :-) The A/C was just to protect the sensitive eletronics equipment :-) When I attended Teletype Repair school at San Diego, they gave me a temporary assignment aboard the USS Constellation Aircraft Carrier. And during the 3 weeks I was aboard that 6000 man ship, we were on a training mission where planes were landing 24 hours a day on the flight deck. The sleeping quarters for the radio crew were directly under the steam catapult that launched the aircraft. So for that 3 week period I got only a few winks of sleep as the non stop catapult noise was earth shaking. My heart goes out to those that had to endure life aboard Aircraft Carriers during constant 24hr day ops in war time conditions. I can tell you they kept the chow halls open 24hours a day in order to feed 6000 crew members. And the food wasnt too bad :-) The only time we had to send an SOS with CW was taking the great circle route to Japan via Alaska. At 3am in the Aleutain Islands we lost the power to one of the screws in 45ft seas which caused the loss of steering. So at 3am the ship went to general quarters. We had no RTTY communications that night due to poor propagation so the only way to send a distress message was via CW. NPG in Sfran was the only station would could copy on a freq around 2.7 Mhz. By daylight they had power restored and all was well but we took in lots of water through the ventilator shafts. Anyone who has ever sailed through the Aleutain Islands knows how rough those seas can be at any time of year... And how sea sick a person can be even for an old sea dog :-) On March 28, 1964, I came back to the ship at Whidbey Island after 3 days of liberty to find it was GONE. The ship had gotten underway to Alaska after the Good Friday Earthquake on March 27. So I was stranded on Whidbey Island with nothing but the clothes on my back for 5 days till they flew me to Alaska to meet the ship at Kodiak. The tidal wave that hit Kodiak completely destroyed the power generating capacity so our ship provided power to the city for almost 2 months. The earthquake was a 9.2 and took 10 ton sea buoys and threw them far inland like they were match sticks. After that we visited Alaska every 9 months during the summer R&R back in the states.
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7/19/08 8:31 AM
I was looking into Vibroplex bugs when I stumbled across your site from your eHam.net review of the Vibroplex Original. It was great reading, thank you very much for keeping your blog up.
By the way, I'm currently bidding on what looks like a very nice Vibroplex Original Bug on eBay. I don't know if I'll win it or not, but I'm hoping so. The write-up states it is a one-owner key, purchased in 1960. I was born in 1959, so this one is close enough to have almost been made for me.
73 es CUL de AC4FS