# Morse sidetone



## odobber6 (Mar 1, 2011)

I was ships r/o in 70’s. Couple years with Marconi and rest freelance.
Fot the life of me I cannot remember if the transmitters had sidetone or
if we sent Morse without sidetone. Anyone out there remember?
Thanks


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## djringjr (Feb 11, 2008)

None of the U.K. ships nor of any other nationality I visited including the many U.S. ships I sailed on ever had sidetone. when I used my Vibroplex I just tuned in with one of the extra HF receivers, we often had several spares. On MF I either used the receiver bleed over or just the clicking of those many relays which made the required QSK (break in) possible.

73

DR


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## odobber6 (Mar 1, 2011)

Thanks David.
I probably used the clicking relays while sending . Now days I am lost without sidetone on my radio.


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## Troppo (Feb 18, 2010)

Every ship I sailed on had sidetone - UK and Australian flag.

This was the 80s, though.


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## gwzm (Nov 7, 2005)

None of the ships I sailed on in the early/mid 60s had sidetone. I relied on the "feel" of the key and the noise of the loud Marconi 365 keys. The HT dynamotor in the Oceanspans provided a useful indication because the whine dropped under load when the key was pressed. Today I prefer not to have sidetone.
Happy days,
gwzm


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

I think all of mine had sidetone (by design rather than overcoming the de-sense!) That would be Crusader/R408. Globespan/Atalanta. Crusader/Atalanta plus a couple of later (Conqueror? - Texacos Spain and London) that I cannot recall with Apollo and then a Sait setup which was my last playing with keys. I may have a drawing of Crusader, I may pull it out to check in an idle moment or two.


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## J. Davies (Dec 29, 2010)

none of my ships had sidetone. At college we trained to send without sidetone so we were prepared for that.


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## Harry Nicholson (Oct 11, 2005)

College at South Shields had a vast old wood table with keys set all around. For the PMG exam, the trick was to rest the unused elbow on the table and cup the ear with that hand. The thud of the key transmitted a faint booming sound up the arm and into the ear. It helped, and the examiner understood what we were about.
I failed the first test because of shaky nerves. Was advised to talk to the chemist in Ocean Rd. For a florin he sold me two benzedrine. I took them 20 mins before the test - they were like a double whisky, and all went well.
Don't recall sidetone on Brocks gear, but there was always a bit of helpful magnetostriction going on, round and about.


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## odobber6 (Mar 1, 2011)

Harry Nicholson said:


> College at South Shields had a vast old wood table with keys set all around. For the PMG exam, the trick was to rest the unused elbow on the table and cup the ear with that hand. The thud of the key transmitted a faint booming sound up the arm and into the ear. It helped, and the examiner understood what we were about.
> I failed the first test because of shaky nerves. Was advised to talk to the chemist in Ocean Rd. For a florin he sold me two benzedrine. I took them 20 mins before the test - they were like a double whisky, and all went well.
> Don't recall sidetone on Brocks gear, but there was always a bit of helpful magnetostriction going on, round and about.


Thanks Harry. Never heard of that way of receiving Morse but whatever worked!!!
The only thing I do remember for sure was we had a very loud oscillator at school so we had sidetone learning Morse.
Thank you all for your responses.


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## martin winn (Oct 10, 2007)

On my first ships with Oceanspan tx the way to get side tone was to connect two wires from the two end spring contacts left hand side of bottom tray. The r/t section wasn't turned off. This was a tip from a Marconi depot engineer. It worked 100%. Now its 50 years since i did that, so the actual location of the contacts may be slightly different.


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## sparks69 (Dec 18, 2005)

I always carried a DA-1 side swiper with a nice loud (adjustable) side tone.
Wouldn't have been without it !
Found it up in the loft this summer whilst having a clear out. Still works too.


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## Sparks58 (Jan 6, 2016)

odobber6 said:


> I was ships r/o in 70’s. Couple years with Marconi and rest freelance.
> Fot the life of me I cannot remember if the transmitters had sidetone or
> if we sent Morse without sidetone. Anyone out there remember?
> Thanks


As i remember it the Marconi txs had sidetone, ie Commander, Conquerer, Crusader . The IMR ( ITT) did not. I cannot remember if the EB (ERICSON) or KelvinHughes had sidetone or not.


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## 5TT (May 3, 2008)

We trained without side tone at college but of the ships I sailed on, only those with older gear didn't have side tone available, and on those I just turned up the volume on my Katsumi keyer.


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## Adil Faredoon Boomla (Nov 11, 2021)

odobber6 said:


> I was ships r/o in 70’s. Couple years with Marconi and rest freelance.
> Fot the life of me I cannot remember if the transmitters had sidetone or
> if we sent Morse without sidetone. Anyone out there remember?
> Thanks


As far as I can remember, we had an option whether we wanted sidetone or not, in most of the equipment.
Best Regards


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## gwzm (Nov 7, 2005)

sparks69 said:


> I always carried a DA-1 side swiper with a nice loud (adjustable) side tone.
> Wouldn't have been without it !
> Found it up in the loft this summer whilst having a clear out. Still works too.


I was given a broken DA-1 a couple of years ago. The work of the devil to fix without a circuit diagram and several broken wires to find homes for. Anyway, it is now working but I’m glad I never had to use one in anger - the racket from the keying relay is deafening and would have made me very unpopular if I’d tried to use it on a sked in the middle of the night!
There’s a photo of it in another thread.
Happy days,
gwzm


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## Hewie (Oct 3, 2007)

None of the ships I sailed on ever had sidetone 1964-1973 UK and Foreign flag. Had to get an oscillator to use a bug or electronic key. Using a straight key was not a problem listening to key clicks as that was how we trained.
73 PH


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## spaarks (May 1, 2009)

djringjr said:


> when I used my Vibroplex I just tuned in with one of the extra HF receivers, we often had several spares.
> 
> 73
> 
> DR





odobber6 said:


> I was ships r/o in 70’s. Couple years with Marconi and rest freelance.
> Fot the life of me I cannot remember if the transmitters had sidetone or
> if we sent Morse without sidetone. Anyone out there remember?
> Thanks


With my Vibroplex with IMR and AEI gear I used my transistor radio for sidetone. It must have had a good front end, as it survived (unlike the Pantenna!). 
Then I built an el-key from a Radcom design (RSGB Bulletin then), which was a partial success. Then I bought a nice wee el-key as advertised in the ROU magazine, but by that time I think most TXs had sidetone.
The best pump-handle key was the IMR/ITT, I still have one.


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## DickGraham (Oct 2, 2017)

I used to use (and still have) a Spacemark ETM-2bs keyer and used to plug a small earpiece into its sidetone output and wear it under my headphones (padded ). Coming across something that had been plugged into a sweaty earhole for hours and then kept in a cardboard box for 40 years was not nice


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## brewj (Feb 26, 2007)

odobber6 said:


> I was ships r/o in 70’s. Couple years with Marconi and rest freelance.
> Fot the life of me I cannot remember if the transmitters had sidetone or
> if we sent Morse without sidetone. Anyone out there remember?
> Thanks


I was also an R/O in the '70's, both with Marconi and then freelance. I used equipment from many different manufacturers but never once came across anything with a facility for sidetone. I found that quite a shock when I firstly went to sea, as we had not been told about it. Eventually I just built a simple oscillator and drove it from the morse key. I took it with me from ship to ship.


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## gwzm (Nov 7, 2005)

Brocklebank’s SS Mahseer: The main receivers were Marconi Electra and Mercury side-by-side. They had four holes in the top to allow them to be bolted together, one on top of the other. I removed the blanking plug from the hole on the top right hand side of the Mercury and installed a Belling Lee co-ax socket with a trailing wire from that to the top cap of the detector valve and pushed an old-fashioned poppy, which had a wire stem into the socket. That provided enough pick-up to give a pleasant side-tone when the TX was keyed. The radio super saw the funny side but still made me remove it.
Happy days
gwzm


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## peterh76-86 (Jan 13, 2012)

My fist trip as RO, the earthing in the radio room was not that good and I used to get a slight tingle on the top of my ear from the metal band of the headphones when transmitting. Did not need sidetone.


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