# Nice bit of rare footage



## R651400 (Jun 18, 2005)

SVA's operating skills seem to have declined some to what I remember. 
By the sound of it he didn't even have the right ship for the intended QTC!
Can anyone come up with the equipment console type?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNmfmT_G9ec&feature=related


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

Looks like ITT Console to me. Etymos!

John T.


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## NoR (Mar 24, 2008)

Good clip here re Portishead Radio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owTO7RAuPmE&feature=related


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Malcolm,

No idea what the console is. That was some pretty rubbish morse! I don't remember them being that way either.

Nor,

Larry has made a few about the station and posted them on the tube. That one had yours truly in it. Sitting at the RT. This was a BT publicity shot and featured myself at the back of the picture with Ray Stevens in the middle and Claire Francis - Yachtswoman and author in the foreground. I had been giving her instructions on the RT that day for her single handed voyage on her yacht ADC Acutrac. The music is by Mike Batt who made an LP which had this track on. Unfortunately I do not have a copy. He had spent a long time on his yacht Braemar wondering around the world. Cant remember the callsign but it was something like MSMJ. He spoke to us practically all the time from all sorts of areas with RT and I seem to recall telex. Larry or Graham will help me out on this. Larry probably still has the LP!

Neville - Hawkey01


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## jaydeeare (Feb 5, 2008)

Just out of interest, does anyone have any idea why the clock only shows the W/T Silence Period and not the R/T Silence Period?

I thought Radio Cabin clocks had both.


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## Bob Murdoch (Dec 11, 2004)

jaydeeare said:


> Just out of interest, does anyone have any idea why the clock only shows the W/T Silence Period and not the R/T Silence Period?
> 
> I thought Radio Cabin clocks had both.


My ancient memory may have faded but I do not recall the RT sp as being marked on the radio room clock between 1956 and 1962.
As I say, memory may have gone for a silence period.(Jester)
Bob


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

jaydeeare said:


> Just out of interest, does anyone have any idea why the clock only shows the W/T Silence Period and not the R/T Silence Period?
> 
> I thought Radio Cabin clocks had both.


In all the radio rooms that I sailed in, and on all the ships that I worked on as a shore technician, the clock showed only the W/T silence periods. I have only seen clock faces marked with both R/T and W/T silence periods in photos.


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

Nev,

Mike Batt's yacht 'Braemar/MSZJ' was a regular on RTT around 1982 with telex links to his office. I recall that when his LP 'Waves' was issued (which featured the track 'Portishead Radio') a box of them arrived at the station and there was a draw to decide which staff won a copy.

I was one of the lucky winners and indeed still have the LP. It has also been re-released on CD and I think can be downloaded from some MP3 sites.

Whilst name-dropping we also used to handle RT traffic from Simon Lebon's (he of Duran Duran fame) yacht 'Drum' but I don't think we received any freebies from him......

I am working on a couple more videos at the moment but footage is not that easy to find. I have a few items which appeared on local news in the 1980s and 1990s and also some radio interviews with staff which need to be transferred into a digital format when time permits.

Larry +


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## Bob Murdoch (Dec 11, 2004)

Bob Murdoch said:


> My ancient memory may have faded but I do not recall the RT sp as being marked on the radio room clock between 1956 and 1962.
> As I say, memory may have gone for a silence period.(Jester)
> Bob


Just remembered a photograph of yours truly in the radio room of Bowring's Cape Breton/GLXG in 1959. (Yeah, a bsh+t one for the oldies) it is just possible to see the clock and the 12 o'clock position. No SP visible.
Will try to load it.
Bob (Thumb)memory good after all


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## jaydeeare (Feb 5, 2008)

Thanks for the info 

So this video and clock were old and before W/T?

From my College days, I'm sure the R/T Silence Period (2182K/c's - as it was then) was indicated in blue from 12:00 to 12:03 and 6:00 to 6:03, with the W/T (500 K/c's) in red as seen in the video. This is going back to the late 60's.


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Larry,

thanks for that I knew you would come up trumps. I nearly had his callsign! At least I remembered it was an M. 

Neville


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## R651400 (Jun 18, 2005)

jaydeeare said:


> So this video and clock were old and before W/T?


The footage gives ship's details and is dated 1990. Never sailed with a radio room clock with R/T silence periods marked (generally in green). 
This may have been different for H24 or any ship that maintained a R/T watch. 
I may add that British coast stations in my time had neither W/T or R/T silence periods marked on their clocks.


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

UK Coast Stations mostly had digital readout clocks, but a more conventional one was available. Ths one is by Sewills, Liverpool. Note though, no 'wind up' holes !!

David
+


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## Naytikos (Oct 20, 2008)

A lot of interesting stuff on this thread:

I have had some clocks marked with only the W/T silence periods and some marked with both R/T and W/T. It probably depended only upon which was available at the time. As I recall, W/T compulsorily fitted ships were only required to observe the W/T silence periods, thus by definition only those need be displayed on the clock. 

I agree with trotterdotpom, it looks like an ITT/IMR console to me; based, that is, upon the style; it postdates my last experience of their gear by 15 years.

I also agree that the SVA operator must have been having an off day; they were much much better than that.

I hesitate to go on in this exalted company, and, no doubt, other members have been able to translate the QSO, but as no-one else has yet posted the details I will take the liberty of so doing:

At the beginning SVA is starting to send a QTC to 'Paulina/9HJV2'
The R/O interrupts and give his QRA as 'Handycarrier/9HJV2'

Everyone got that, I am sure.

There is an intermission and we find the R/O listening to SVF. 
SVF calls but has QRM5 and tells the R/O 'up 386' (obviously an 8Mc/s working frequency - Oh, the joy of a synthesised transmitter).

Obviously we missed a bit during the intermission because the SVF operator sends the following, in colloquial greek:
'probably it was mis-addressed by the coast station please if you don't mind
the QTC is from Limnos(SVL) and it says for the chief engineer..........'

and there we change scene.

If I had to guess, SVF wants the R/O to go and ask the C/E if he knows anything about a message from someone in Limnos so as to determine if they have the correct ship but wrong name, or wrong ship altogether.


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

"....If I had to guess, SVF wants the R/O to go and ask the C/E if he knows anything about a message from someone in Limnos so as to determine if they have the correct ship but wrong name, or wrong ship altogether."

All sounds very friendly and easy going, doesn't it? I'm reminded of making a phone call to a village in southern Spain. The only phone was in a local café and we had to wait while someone went to get the Steward's mother.

Gentler times!

John T.


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## R651400 (Jun 18, 2005)

david.hopcroft said:


> UK Coast Stations mostly had digital readout clocks, but a more conventional one was available. Ths one is by Sewills, Liverpool. Note though, no 'wind up' holes !!+


No digital or conventional clocks in the sixties!
Coast station console clocks as I remember at GND were all tied to a very accurate and central clock complete with huge pendulum and housed in it's own small room. 
This central clock was adjustable manually moving all the other station clocks accordingly probably via the time signal from GBR. 
This rather flowery footage of GLD shows one such clock (without markings), also "Canberra" with R/T room clock with both silence period markings.
Not you Nev??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh_IxQ_8I70


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## Tai Pan (Mar 24, 2006)

Never had a clock with R/T sps, 1950 -1960. ( bluies did not waste money on extra bebobs)


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Malcolm,

no before my time. The first fellow we see on the RT was Cleeve Gregory who came to GKA when GLD and GND became the control stations. We were supposed to have the DOC system at GKA as well and take control when other stations were unmanned. Hence there were a number of coast station RO´s relocated to GKA to cover the coast station operation. I had been at GIL for 2 years to work in this section. Coast station work as you know was a different animal and relied a lot on local knowledge especially when distress working. The idea being to have men from around the coast at GKA. Needless to say it did not happen in this way and we never had coast station work at GKA. The Neville was one Neville Abbot.

Neville - Hawkey01


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Thanks for translating the QSO with SVA. I couldn't understand it. Bit like GKA on 16 mcs with a double search and god knows how many blokes trying to get on the key. I worked SVA once from a Royal Mail liner in the South Atlantic. We had picked up badly burnt crew from a Greek freighter. ( One subsequently died). Just been sent a video of Jay Lerner show with two blokes sending /receiving morse and somebody texting. Both with the same message.
The morse blokes won!.
Anyway very interesting bit of video and much nicer console than I ever sailed with.
rgds
Graham Powell


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

*Coast station console clocks as I remember at GND were all tied to a very accurate and central clock complete with huge pendulum and housed in it's own small room. 
This central clock was adjustable manually moving all the other station clocks accordingly probably via the time signal from GBR. *
The central long pendulum master was not radio controlled, but electro-mechanical. The thumbnail shows one of the consol repeaters. Not very big I'm afraid, but gives an idea - no SP's note. When GKZ was re-furbished, the master was coveted by many, but it went to someone at Rugby we think. 

David
+


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## Quiney (Oct 2, 2008)

Hmmmm.... obviously headphone were not supplied on that ship!


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## R651400 (Jun 18, 2005)

Thanks the photo in #20, David. 
What I should have said in #16 was the central master could be adjusted manually to any time signal and most probably the one from GBR. 
From the mists of time my memory tells me the master was checked twice a day.
Why the slave clocks on the consoles had no SP markings is a mystery but I think after a short while at coast stations both W/T and R/T silence periods came as second nature.


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Hi David, The clocks at GKA were operated from a master clock in the VF room.
It consisted of a pendulum which every so often would trip a contact and step the clocks on. It had no face or dial. They were common throughout the Post Office in telephone exchanges. ( I also was an exchange construction engineer on the GPO). When I was on MO duties it was my job to check the clock and I seem to remember having a stop watch and listening to a time signal. All lost in the mists of time now I'm afraid but I think it was checked at least once a day.
Of course all the clocks were on GMT which would throw the odd tradesman working in the station. One painter was annoyed when he worked to 1800 gmt
and told us our clocks were all wrong. 
When we went over to a computerised message handling system , the clocks were changed to digital ones which was when I discovered my eyesight was failing. I misread one and put the 0930 Atlantic weather for transmission at the wrong time. (Apologies to all in advance).
rgds Graham Powell


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

Graham P Powell said:


> ...the clocks were changed to digital ones which was when I discovered my eyesight was failing. I misread one and put the 0930 Atlantic weather for transmission at the wrong time. (Apologies to all in advance).
> rgds Graham Powell


Confession is good for the soul, or so they say Graham.

Now who is going to admit to putting out the 2145Z GTZZ Press tape on the wrong way round, one night in 1960/61, so sending out 45 minutes of gibberish and causing me (the most junior of R/Os on the ship) a near heart attack? Scared witless to admit that I couldn't find the Press, scared to wake the Chief or Second Sparks and scared what they, the Purser and the passengers would say next day.

What a blessed relief when someone came on-air, live key, to apologise briefly and announce that the Press broadcast would resume in X-minutes time. But never a mention of the name of the guilty party. Come on, you know who you are.


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Ron,

well I can safely say it was not me, nor Graham and not Larry. None of us there at that time. Phew!!!

Neville - Hawkey01


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Hi Ron, I forgot to send the Navereas one day. Got a b.......g from one of our senior operators!. Tom, one of the cleaners, threw the Atlantic weather tape in the rubbish bin one morning as well. 
I wonder if Neville and Larry remember the message we had for a Russian warship with an R... callsign. We had no space for it in the carousel. 
One morning I heard the USS Missouri calling Portsmouth (USA) coastguard. 
I thought I would have a GKA first and answer a US battleship . Got no reply of course. Great days, great blokes. Loved working there . Wish it was still there..
rgds
Graham Powell


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Ron, Almost forgot.. the GTZZ press was supposed to be monitored and someone was always listed for press on nights and it was their job to do just that. The only thing I can think of ( and this will probably only mean anything to Larry and Neville) was that the Ken Wilson or Inky had put up the E/D and they were all out at the Wailing Wall. rgds
Graham Powell


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

Ron Stringer said:


> Confession is good for the soul, or so they say Graham.
> 
> Now who is going to admit to putting out the 2145Z GTZZ Press tape on the wrong way round, one night in 1960/61, so sending out 45 minutes of gibberish and causing me (the most junior of R/Os on the ship) a near heart attack? Scared witless to admit that I couldn't find the Press, scared to wake the Chief or Second Sparks and scared what they, the Purser and the passengers would say next day.
> 
> What a blessed relief when someone came on-air, live key, to apologise briefly and announce that the Press broadcast would resume in X-minutes time. But never a mention of the name of the guilty party. Come on, you know who you are.


Ron,

One of my ex-GKA colleagues remembers an incident exactly the same as the one you quote but around 1970/71 - is this the same one or did it happen twice (not unknown). Or was it a regular occurrence? I recall the traffic list garbling a few times when the tape reader kept slipping, but the press was before my time....

Larry +


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

Graham P Powell said:


> The only thing I can think of ( and this will probably only mean anything to Larry and Neville) was that the Ken Wilson or Inky had put up the E/D and they were all out at the Wailing Wall. rgds
> Graham Powell


Oh yes, the wailing wall....the only time when all the w/t operators could be seen running down the operating wings, pens in hand to grab the E/D (overtime). Some of the more elderly staff were flattened by the tidal wave of R/Os eager to 'fill their boots'.

For those unfamiliar with GKA folklore, a sheet was pinned on the staff notice board each week by Writing Duty with details of the following week's overtime allocations. Most weeks there were 'gaps' which were filled on a first-come first served basis, hence the rush to the board.

Some years later the allocation of overtime changed to a Writing Duty officer wandering the wings shouting for volunteers - not quite the same.

Happy days indeed!

Larry +


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

Larry Bennett said:


> Ron,
> 
> One of my ex-GKA colleagues remembers an incident exactly the same as the one you quote but around 1970/71 - is this the same one or did it happen twice (not unknown). Or was it a regular occurrence? I recall the traffic list garbling a few times when the tape reader kept slipping, but the press was before my time....
> 
> Larry +


No my scare was either late in 1960 or early in 1961 when I was 3rd R/O on E & F's 'Golfito'. I came ashore in 1966 so missed the incident that you mention - thank goodness - I don't think I could have taken a second dose! (Jester) 

Actually by 1971 I had already learned that Post Office coast stations were not quite the paragons of virtue that I thought they were when I was first at sea (and thought that any mistake must by mine, not theirs). Experience in the North Sea with the narrow-band Autospec teleprinter channels on the rigs quickly cured me of that illusion. [=P]


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## R651400 (Jun 18, 2005)

Another youtube morsel from a much earlier era. 
Wick Radio/GKR circa 1938 with both R/T and W/T points.
The W/T point shows a DF goniometer when coast stations offered what was known as a chargeable QTF service on 410 kc/s.
Caption says it is a GPO do***entary yet slight hiccup at the beginning with stn call-sign!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtgBaIEd3-0


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

Great stuff - I can see me spending a bit of time checking out all the associated links.

Funny how when people talk into microphones, the noise comes out of the aerials in morse. I've noticed that on quite a few films.

In the comments under the film clips, Charlie Gregory spotted himself (Charlie wrote "Sailing with Hunters" - a great yarn about deep sea fishing and available on the web ) - he was the one speaking French, d'ye ken? Also another writer spotted his long gone father - very touching.

I noticed the hiccup in the morse at the beginning - there was another at the end, I'm pretty sure they showed the Longships Lighthouse just off Landsend, ie not exactly near Wick! Never mind, I suppose we can give them a bit of "latitude" for artistic licence.

John T.


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Hi larry, The cry of ...."its up"... and the station would empty. What about those guys who would hang around after finishing work to wait for the overtime to go up. Many an R/O got stabbed in the hand when deleting their Sunday E/D. Forty hours normal duty and 40 hours overtime. Grand in the hand.
Those were the days...
rgds
Graham


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## Larry Bennett (Aug 28, 2005)

Graham P Powell said:


> Hi larry, The cry of ...."its up"... and the station would empty. What about those guys who would hang around after finishing work to wait for the overtime to go up. Many an R/O got stabbed in the hand when deleting their Sunday E/D. Forty hours normal duty and 40 hours overtime. Grand in the hand.
> Those were the days...
> rgds
> Graham


Too right Graham....hammering the overtime for a couple of years paid for the deposit on my first house. Could do with a bit of overtime now come to think of it.

Larry +


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## Naytikos (Oct 20, 2008)

_posted by trotterdotpom_


> Funny how when people talk into microphones, the noise comes out of the aerials in morse. I've noticed that on quite a few films.


Near the beginning of 'Dr No', when 'Universal Export' is trying to raise the Kingston station which has gone off-air; the operator is calling into a mic and using a straight key simultaneously.


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## R651400 (Jun 18, 2005)

The Wick Radio footage placed on youtube by franklaasen is actually part of a 1938 do***entary which begins under the title North Sea 1. 
Giving some idea of how hard life was for deep-sea trawlermen at this time it is well worth following through even though the dialogue may be a bit difficult for some to follow!


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Hi Larry, You could put in extra hours and boost your income but of course as one or two found out, the extra duty could disappear very quickly as well and then you were up a creek without a paddle.....
rgds
Graham


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Hi , Just looked at the Wick film from 1938. Those men would probably have been trained Post Office telegraphists and not ex Seagoing R/O's. They didn't come in till after the war. We had one old chap at GKA who had transferred from the Shetlands because GKA was the last place using morse on the Inland Telegraph network. ( It was always a bit behind everybody else....).
rgds
Graham Powell


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

Naytikos said:


> _posted by trotterdotpom_
> Near the beginning of 'Dr No', when 'Universal Export' is trying to raise the Kingston station which has gone off-air; the operator is calling into a mic and using a straight key simultaneously.


There were times when I could have done with something like that when trying to contact VQI. It was fine on 500kHz when loading round the North Coast of Jamaica but terrible to contact on HF during the Southampton-Barbados leg, or on the Trinidad-Jamaica leg where we were trying to order bunkers to be made available on arrival (always a Sunday evening). 

Almost as bad as VPL (Cloud)


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## landoburns (Aug 15, 2006)

trotterdotpom said:


> All sounds very friendly and easy going, doesn't it? I'm reminded of making a phone call to a village in southern Spain. The only phone was in a local café and we had to wait while someone went to get the Steward's mother.
> 
> Gentler times!
> 
> John T.


When I sailed with A.M.P.T.C we used to get a free 10 minute R/T call home every month. I was making the call for an Iraqi 2nd Mate to his wife in rural Wales and over 5 mins later the Portishead R/O came back and told me "This is just not on Old Man, someone has gone on a motorbike on a wet night to bring his wife from the next village" - when I came over the story in the ship's bar later on I got a bollocking off the 2nd Mate for breaking the official secrets act


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

Who were/are AMPTC - glad I never sailed with them. Free phone calls! What a pain. Did you get the no hopers phoning the speaking clock just to get their money's worth?

Hope you told that humourless Iraqi where to get off too - lots of QRM for him next time, haw haw (you don't have to be a cook to spit in the soup!).

John T.


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Hi chaps, When Bantry Bay was going we used to get calls for a tiny place in aremote part of Ireland. First step was Dublin and then you got passed from exchange to exchange until you finally got connected by which time the transmission level was miniscule. Calls to Irag and India were almost as bad though one African country (not sure which one) had a superb telephone system and you could dial it direct and get right through.
rgds
Graham Powell


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

JT,

Arab Maritime Petroleum Transport Company. One of there tankers which I can remember was the Shat Al Arab. We used to work them but cannot recall the other names. Still going strong now with a modern fleet.
The Shat al Arab was around 400,000 tons.
One of my ex colleagues sailed as an RO with them.

Neville -Hawkey01


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Graham,

bet that it was a French protectorate - Ivory Coast or similar.

PS Gather you are having a lot of rain! 

Neville


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Hi Neville, What you might call a Goose Drowner. Nice today though and Europe won the Ryder Cup.
I think it was an ex French colony. Possibly Ivory Coast though I have a vague recollection it was Cameroun. Been looking on some of the GKA videos on You Tube. Phil Lewis, Ernie, Phil Murray, Gus, all on there and all now silent keys.
Frightening isn't it.
rgds
Graham


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

[Actually by 1971 I had already learned that Post Office coast stations were not quite the paragons of virtue that I thought they were when I was first at sea (and thought that any mistake must by mine, not theirs). Experience in the North Sea with the narrow-band Autospec teleprinter channels on the rigs quickly cured me of that illusion. [=P][/QUOTE]

_Yes indeed, private-wire telex channels were a challenge. Though with a stable power supply in the dry and warm, perhaps the Coast Stations had the edge. Just because we were in the 'middle' of the circuit and the problems usually sorted after CRS involvement, didn't mean it was always our problems. One offshore Op- I came across couldn't get to grips with 'specs out' meaning patched out of circuit - not switching it off !! ........ Unifor One, North Star, Constellation.......pioneering days !!_
David
+


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

david.hopcroft said:


> Yes indeed, private-wire telex channels were a challenge.... Just because we were in the 'middle' of the circuit and the problems usually sorted after CRS involvement, didn't mean it was always our problems.


We had plenty of up and downers with the Post Office engineers when we had Autospec in the southern part of the North Sea. Always the claim was that their gear was working fine and the problem was offshore. Of course this was sometimes the case but in so many cases it wasn't. Things like signal polarity reversal, power reduction or loss of signal due to unreliability of the filters that were used on the input to the PO transmitters. Or some engineer in a telephone exchange somewhere, through which the landline happened to be routed, would inadvertently pull a plug or swap a line while testing some other circuit, disconnecting the line to the coast station transmitter.

When operation was off Norfolk, the Humber or even the Tees, it was more or less manageable but when exploration started offshore from Aberdeen, It got beyond a joke. Responding to those calls involved us in a 2-hour journey to Heathrow, a flight to Aberdeen, a long wait at Dyce for a chopper to the rig, only to find that all was working OK aboard. Then began a long exchange, firstly with GND and eventually with Post Office engineers in Rugby or somewhere. After a day or so on the rig (hot-bedding because we were unplanned visitors) the link would suddenly become live and the printer would start to chatter. In every case we would then be told, ''We haven't changed anything here, the fault must have been at your end.'' Then your problems began in earnest - when you were going to the rig, you had emergency priority on the chopper flights because the loss of the teleprinter link could interfere with drilling progress. Once everything was working OK again, your travel requirements went to the bottom of the pile! I once spent 10 days on a rig waiting for a place on the chopper to get off.

So we set up our own monitoring station in Chelmsford, having had so many 'false alarms' claiming that there were problems on one rig or another. We connected a receiver to a spectrum analyser which displayed the receiver IF output, so that we could monitor GND's signal. That allowed us to view each one of the 16 channels in the sideband and monitor their individual output.

So the next time that, say, 'Staflo' called in to report their teleprinter link was not working, we could look and see that there was no output from GND on Staflo's channel. A call to the PO engineers to inform them that they had a problem with 'no output on Channel 7' was easy. Of course we still had to wait a day or so for the fault to be fixed but at least we were at home and hadn't had to make a round trip of 1,000 miles or so.

Mind you, after we then saw the channel restored, we were still told that they had done nothing to their equipment, which they always claimed had been working correctly throughout. Even photos of the spectrum analyser display of the GND sideband signals (before and after) didn't change that. [=P]


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Ron, It was run by engineers. Most of whom knew nothing about maritime radio. The R/T receivers at GKA were total crap. They were tuneable with difficulty as they were originally destined for point to point operation. It was engineers who wanted us all moved to Somerton so that they could keep their cosy little station. Our own GKA engineers were okay but once you got onto Telex/telephone exchanges, land lines, transmisson buildings and transmitters there were too many fingers poking around. ( and I'm speaking as an ex PO engineer).
You may remember the palaver setting up H/F R/T calls in the early 60's. 
That was all engineers again. Lincompex, another waste of time but we had it installed because the engineers wanted it.
regards
Graham Powell


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

Graham, 

You are so right.


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

Ron

Pleased to hear things were fairly ok thru Humber. I had a lot to do with the day to day stuf, even though I was NOT an engineer - just part of our RO duties. 

Yes, the landline was often a problem. At GKZ we had fixed tuned receivers on the sitor, a VFT for each channel, autospecs and HS113 widebands as Tx's - all Marconi gear. All housed in a separate building and kept warm and dry.

We may even have spoken on occasion !

David
+


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

david.hopcroft said:


> We may even have spoken on occasion!


If so, I do hope that I was polite! My old boss George Gardiner used to despair of my tendency to call a spade a f***ing shovel. Perhaps it was my red hair or Celtic origins that made me so short-fused when I thought I was being given the run-around by the PO engineers. Identifying that a problem was ashore rather than on the rig and reporting it, then being called back several times in the next week only to find the same problem was still there, really used to wind me up. 

George's approach was more the ''Please could you check this out for me, old man? It would be so helfpful if you could resolve this matter for us.'' Not my style at all. The oil company was paying the PO top dollar for the circuit, the PO were paying the engineers to keep the circuit up and running and Marconi was paying me and my expenses for trolling fruitlessly up and down the country, to go out to rigs to fix non-existent problems. If you went by helicopter (Whirlwind) you were lucky, usually it involved tiny supply boats and hanging on the outside of that bloody basket contraption to be whisked off a lurching deck by a crane driven by a man on the rig that couldn't even see you. I can even find myself getting wound up, over 40 years after the event! (Jester)

Off the East Coast it was not all MF telex links, we had line-of-sight UHF links to the rigs, coming ashore at Tetney and Easington. UHF was very state of the art then - still valve technology - and working at the very limits of range. The slightest fall-off in valve performance and the circuit became marginal. It was a long drive from Chelmsford in the days before the motorways or the Humber Bridge. I certainly couldn't work the hours and drive the miles these days.


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

Ron

If you look at marinetraffic.com the AIS site and zoom in to Lincolnshire, you will see the shore AIS installation at Mablethorpe. This is the Arco-Pickerill microwave tower. This is what replaced most things in my last days. The VHF DF is on the top, and the AIS gear in the other users room below. 

The microwave link is centrally controlled from Mormond Hill !! 

All a very long way from bashing two bits of brass together !

David
+


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## M29 (Apr 20, 2007)

Hi,
Perhaps someone can give confirmation to a funny story that was circulated around our college by ex GKA operators. The story goes that a stack of telegrams were to have their tops removed using a standard office guillotine for reasons I am not sure of. Anyway, the GKA operator placed the stack wrongly on the guillotine and managed to decapitate the stack, cleanly removing the preambles and addresses from the rest of the telegrams.
There then apparantly followed hours of fun, trying to match headings with telegrams, a difficult task given the clean cut. This incident would have been in around 1970-1975

Best Wishes

Alan


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

That would have been a regular occurrance at Haifa Radio M29.

John T.


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

M29,

Well! umh! possibly. Allegedly, I could not possibly comment.

Hawkey01


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

trotterdotpom said:


> That would have been a regular occurrance at Haifa Radio M29.
> 
> John T.


But wouldn't you have needed a rabbi to supervise?


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## Graham P Powell (Jun 2, 2007)

Never heard that one. I was at GKA from 1975. There was one very famous incident where a message was read by everybody and not sent on. Everybody in the landline at the time ( whether involved or not) received a written warning.
They were still talking about it in the 1980's ( and this happened in the early 50's). Certainly in 1975 the incoming messages were received on gummed tape which had to be stuck to message pads. I saw one one day addressed to POTPISHEADRADIO which I found quite amusing. 
Even the computerised system could be on the receiving end of a cock up.
Like the time it crashed and was re booted using the wrong date thus deleting all the traffic. I won't mention any names but Neville and Larry were not involved.
rgds
Graham Powell


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## hawkey01 (Mar 15, 2006)

Graham et all,

back in the early days we did have a very large copier which was situated in the landline room which by its title was used to copy SLTS and any other traffic which needed a copy for accounting etc. This was a vast machine with large rollers and was fed by the most noxious chemical. Sometimes it gave out gas from said chemical and it made those within close proximity quite soporific. You fed the original item into it and eventually a copy appeared at the bottom. The originals then had the bottom half removed - perforate tear off. This is were the receiving RO had put relevant info - ships name callsign received date time etc. This for accounting. If you remember ever seeing an SLT at home it only had ships name and text. No other info as described above. Needless to say that when there were large numbers of SLT´s it was quicker to put them through a guillotine than rip each off individually. In the back of my mind there was an incident when some had the heads removed. Also vague remembrance of a jigsaw puzzle of texts and heads. I think what most likely happened was fairly simple as they by this time would have been copied and it would not have been too much of a job to associate each with its text. They then would have been retyped and no one would have been any wiser. Except the secret leaked out!
This vast machine was nicknamed by me and others as the Elephant as it had a vast outlet pipe through the window/wall to clear the noxious fumes, which it failed to do. Luckily technology advanced quickly and it was eventually replaced.

Neville - Hawkey01


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