# N s w s



## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

A good friend has given me some back issues of Notices to Ships Wireless Stations. I was surprised to see in No. 1/1975 the map of services, the pdf below. I was at GKZ from 1969, and remember having Ch16 and 26 VHF. By 1975, we remoted Bacton - on the Shell gas site - again with one, 27, working channel.

It is only just over 40 years ago, but how things changed. At the end in 2000, GKZ remoted two channels at Grimsby - 2GY, four at Bacton - 2BA, three at Orfordness - 2OF and three at Humber, one of which, 85, was on a directional aerial pointing down the flat coast to the Wash, and all of that and every other Coast Station was network controlled by a computer !!


The GKZ service on 16 & 26 was a Marconi valve rack - as in the thumbnail. At the end they were all Storno CQF600's, also as shown, noted for their ruggedness. One survived a lightning strike on St Boniface down at Niton. (the mains lead was empty of copper when the engineers looked at it!)


The last thumbnail shows one of the operating positions with the appearance of the VHF channels just above the RO's head. That required multi-tasking at it's best.


Now of course everything fits in your back pocket !!


David
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## Troppo2 (Jun 25, 2018)

We had a very large VHF radphone network in Australia, called seaphone.

It was eventually killed dead by mobiles.

At its height, it covered the complete east coast and all capital cities.


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