# Blacklist



## Vital Sparks (Sep 19, 2007)

During my time at college it was a standing joke/rumour that UK coast stations ran a blacklist of call signs who having previously been impolite would always have to wait to get an answer. Surely this wasn't true, or was it?


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## NoMoss (Mar 14, 2007)

I don't remember such a thing. I think you credit the staff with either better memories or more malic than they had.


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

In my experience, no - BUT:

We used to keep a 'black book' of vessels whose R/Os operating skills were such that the accuracy of their morse was questionable. If the same vessel was regularly reported then details were furnished to the relevant shipping/radio company accordingly.

Rumour has it that the book was withdrawn following a visit to GKA from a seagoing R/O; he was shown the 'black book' only to find he was in it......not sure if this is true, but it's a good story nonetheless!

There was also the 'stop list' where vessels were barred from communicating with GKA due to non-payment of accounts - normally flag of convenience vessels but one or two UK-flag vessels too.

Some vessels were 'notorious' for the poor quality of their cw, and I dare say their calls may have been given a damn good ignoring by the GKA search point operator.

Larry +


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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

I got an infringement notice from the Japs for calling too much on HF.

The old man had it framed and made an official presentation in the officers bar, after which I was made to shout everyone present....

I hung it in the radio room. It was a source of much amusement.

I have it in my office here.

(along with the last QTC to the Aussie coast radio network I sent, but that is another story....)


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

As Larry has stated we did have a bad morse book at GKA. I cannot remember why it vanished. I cannot believe one RO could have had it removed. More than likely that it was pretty ineffectual and no one actually took any notice of the log entries, except ourselves. There was one notorious tanker - a Liberian registered one. Seem to remember it was a Chevron tanker. The vessel had massive amounts of traffic and the RO was almost unreadable. Often if we were feeling in a generous mood and traffic allowed two or sometimes three RO's would listen and try and copy his morse. We reported him on many many occasions. He was eventually relieved. He was probably ignored on a regular basis as it was just so time consuming to try and work him. Having been on the coast as well I can honestly state there was never such a thing as a Black List. The official Black list was as Larry stated - failure to pay bills etc.

Hawkey01


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## 5TT (May 3, 2008)

> two or sometimes three RO's would listen and try and copy his morse


I think the same chap must have got a job at Dakar / 6VA sending the WX, sounded like a bat out of hell as one R/O commented. We'd sometimes "huddle" on 512 afterwards and see if we could piece it together.

= Adrian +


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## keithsparks (Sep 1, 2009)

i was told years ago that the companies that sent the coast stations the best xmas pressie i.e a bott of best malt got priority but i expect all coast station ex r/os will deny this of course or swear that they never saw a drop


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

Must admit we were well looked after at GKA by the shipping companies at Xmas - in fact all staff went home loaded with drinks, chocs etc, the allocation of which was sorted out by the GKA "Welfare Club". Not uncommon to go home with a few bottles or so each.

However - this did not affect priority working. As most of the major companies sent us pressies it didn't really make any difference as to whether a ship got priority QRYs - and to be honest I don't think anyone really cared.

Larry +


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

It would have been impossible to remember all the call signs anyway. I don't remember the black list but their certainly was a bad morse book. I never put anything in it because one night I got a message from a ship complaining about the poor morse of a GKA r/o.
I will tell Hawkeye and Larry who it was but I will refrain from putting it on here!.
I personally took it as a matter of professional pride to be able to read anything that came my way.
One day one of our chaps had to send a message to a PRC ship and the only way to send it was to get a QSL for each word individually. We certainly got Christmas boxes from various shipping companies.
The Niarchos group being particularly generous. It was always rumoured that the bulk of the gifts went to the transmitter engineers at Portishead but unable to confirm that!. Anything that came in was fairly divided up by the station welfare club.
rgds
Graham Powell


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## keithsparks (Sep 1, 2009)

still on the swubject of bad keying how on earth did the c/s r/o s manage to qsl msgs especially the coded ones or foreign msgs especially the greeks with their ch and russian i expect english you could at least guess one or two words .I honestly must say they would have got short thrift from me i hated bad keying ,how did they pass the practical morse test i think most of the failures at neswt were due to bad morse sending .I know some countries used to give out tickets for good attendance but surely we were quite strict with ours


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Keithsparks,

To answer your question. With coded messages you obviously could not guess at the meaning but I personally would not acknowledge anything which I did not believe was correct. You could only copy what letters the RO sent, if unsure then it had to be queried. Neither Greek nor Russian vessels ever tried to use the Greek/Russian code. Likewise nor did the Japanese. Occasionally you may get one who forgot but it was a rarity. I did once have a German vessel sending me accented letters etc but it was a no go as our typewriters and latterly PC's did not have them on the keyboard. It did take me by surprise I can tell you. I had to stop the vessel and explain it was just not possible to receive the message as sent. 
The majority of seagoing RO's were fine and the bad ones were in a minority, there were some who had there own technique but once you got the hang of it, it usually was OK. 
With some who took tickets in obscure places obviously the examiner was not too worried about the keying. Also a lot of them did not have qualifying time and were dumped on ships with no previous seatime. I felt very sorry for these RO's as it was a daunting thing, as we all remember making our first live QSO with a CS. Imagine having to QSO GKA - having never heard the station before nor how it all worked. We all had to guide the odd RO into the intricacy of GKA.

For Graham - bet he used a bug key! 

Hawkey01


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

The normal procedure in German, if you don't have accented letters, is to add an "e" after the letter, eg "ü" becomes "ue" and that was the normal thing to send in morse. That RO must have been a bit of a smart **** or maybe just a newby - we all learned those accented letters and I still remember them, don't dit dit dah dah?

I sailed on some German ships and on the first one I happily sent off all the Old Man's messages with loads of figures about cargo, bunkers, eta's, etc. It wasn't until he gave me one with a "7" (written in the Continental way with a dash across the vertical) in it that I remembered the reason they do that is to distinguish it from a "1", which is written like an English "7". Whoops, every time he wrote "1" I sent "7"! I was mortified, but the world didn't end, we never had any complaints or queries.

John T.


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

I've taken messages in most of the European languages plus some in Welsh and Latin. Had those messages for China consisting of four figure groups as well. One of the more difficult things for the ships masters to understand was message written out in English and then divided into 10 letter groups. They looked like code till you took a close look at them.
For Neville: No he didn't but he was keen on model aircraft and I don't mean the Rottweiler!.
rgds
Graham Powell


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Graham,

yes I know who you mean. Enough said!

Neville


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## keithsparks (Sep 1, 2009)

If an r/o did get reported who was he reported to,did he have any say in the matter or did he just lose his ticket if so it seems a bit one sided to me


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

The infringement notices came from Geneva - maybe it was the ITU, not sure. They asked for a reason why you did whatever you were accused of. I suppose if you ac***ulated a few of them, you'd be in the poo. If you had a reasonable excuse I suppose they took it into account. I never heard of anyone losing their ticket.

John T.


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

trotterdotpom said:


> The infringement notices came from Geneva - maybe it was the ITU, not sure.


It was a _division_ of the ITU called the IFRB (International Frequency Registration Board) located in Geneva. They notified the national administration responsible for the issuing of certificates of competency (in our time the UK GPO/PMG) who took whatever action was deemed appropriate. They could suspend your PMG or ask you to resit any part of it. I never met anyone who admitted that they had been penalised in such a way.


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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

ITU...ha ha ha!

Toothless tiger.


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## keithsparks (Sep 1, 2009)

Surely the best people to report them to was the radio company that hired them or the ships owners if the company wasnt getting their msgs they wanted to know why


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

I think the ROs receiving the infringement notices were located via their employers because they were identified by the ship's callsign.

You can imagine the response they probably got from some of the Flag of Convenience ship operators.

John T.


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## Gareth Jones (Jul 13, 2007)

trotterdotpom said:


> I think the ROs receiving the infringement notices were located via their employers because they were identified by the ship's callsign.
> 
> You can imagine the response they probably got from some of the Flag of Convenience ship operators.
> 
> John T.


 whilst on an FOC ship I got one for excessive calling (which, as we all know, from distant waters you had to do, especially when you only had a low power transmitter). 
I persuaded the OM to send it back with a letter expressing his outrage that the R/O had broken the regulations, and, that R/O had been dismissed from the ship and would never work at sea again!
So after a good laugh I carried on as before. At the end of the day the OM needed his traffic to the owners cleared, and I had to do what I had to do to get that done.


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

I believe that the procedure was for the station that monitored the infringement to complete a standardised ITU form and submit it to their Administration (e.g. FCC or GPO). They in turn forwarded it to the ITU's IFRB section in Geneva.

The IFRB then sent a letter, giving details of the infringement, to the company recorded as operating the ship's radio station - as shown in the List of Ship Stations - asking for an explanation. This letter was copied to the Administration of the flag state of the ship. 

The operating company sent it on to the operator recorded as being in charge of the radio station at the time of the infringement. That is the letter you received. Your replies went back via the same route.

I had 2 or 3 in my 6 years at sea, one for calling WCC on 500 kHz, six seconds before the end of a silence period (Canadian monitoring station) and the other, or others, for sending the callsign of a wanted station more than 3 times on HF.

By the time the letters reached me I was on different ships and I couldn't remember the incidents. But I was most likely to have been guilty - I never sailed with a radio room clock that kept time to an accuracy of 6 seconds between daily time-signal checks, and I nearly always sent the callsign more than 3 times on HF when calling West Indian/Central America coast stations - with an Oceanspan and the quality of watchkeeping down there, nothing else got a reply.

Did I feel any remorse? Not a lot.


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

I got a citation from Canadaigua Monitoring Station in the States for overcalling on HF.

This was the response from the GPO.........

I don't remember the 'slapped wrist' being painful at the time !!

David
+


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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

As I said somewhere else, mine was framed and hung in the Radio Room.


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## holland25 (Nov 21, 2007)

I never received one but I should have,.for trying to raise the Panama Canal coastguard station at Balboa, just after leaving Curacao. I seem to remember calling for hours,through heavy static.


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## J. Davies (Dec 29, 2010)

There was a notoriously bad operator at 9V1 during the 1980's . Nobody could make head nor tail of what he was sending. Ships would either wait until he had gone off watch or send QTC's via another route. Later I came across his reputation again when living in Singapore. An acquaintance who runs a successful electronics repair company failed his R/O Morse test in Singapore, together with most of his classmates. The examiner was from UK. Guess who the instructor was?


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