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I am an Electronics Technician and was in the Navy in the 70's, lived in Europe (Spain and Scotland) for 6 yrs, then rode a motorcycle from Scotland to the northern tip of Norway and down to Morocco while camping in a tent. Moved from my home state of MN to CO in early 80's and like the milder weather here. I've been a ham radio operator since high school and met my wife on the radio 8 years ago when she was in North Carolina, we were married in 2000! I might write about books I've read, or the latest fun I've had with ham radio, we'll see where this goes!

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~NavyVet

Morse Code not needed?

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Contributed by: Glenn Pladsen on 12/23/2006

Well, the FCC has declared that they will soon remove the requirement to learn Morse Code to obtain an Amateur Radio license that allows HF shortwave operating (possibly in February). This is controversial and has many ham operators upset, and many others very happy. It has already happened in most other countries, though, so it wasn't unexpected.

Do we NEED slow Morse Code in these days of blinding fast computer communications? I don't know , but it sure is FUN! I've been using it on the radio since I was 15 in the 60's. Here is a story of a real-life adventure that happened to me, and I'm sure glad a bunch of sailors knew the code then!

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Morse Code Saves U.S. Navy Destroyer!

By: Glenn AE0Q

I became a ham while in high school like many kids in the 60's, and 40m CW soon became my favorite band and mode during the long Minnesota winters. At the time there were lots of people going through the military (thanks to Vietnam and the draft) and I had many rag chews with hams that had recently been Air Force or Navy electronics technicians. After a year of college I decided to enlist in the Navy Advanced Electronics program and was hoping for a job in communications.

During bootcamp training in San Diego I was recruited by the Naval Security Group to be a Cryptologic Tech, Maintenance (CTM) and went on to Electronics Technician (Communications) school at Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. After T.I., came crypto and Teletype equipment training at Mare Island, CA, and Norfolk, VA. I was transferred to Rota, Spain and arrived in time for my 20th birthday in November 1972. I was assigned to the Direct Support maintenance shop where we worked on shipboard type equipment that was temporarily installed on destroyers, for CT operators to use for analysis of various radio signals. Of the 80 or so CTMs assigned to Rota, only 8 of us had the job of 'riding the vans', as our seagoing job was called. The other Maintenance techs worked on equipment in the Security Group building and never had to go to sea.

I was sent to the destroyer USS William M. Wood, DD-715, in the summer of 1973. Our assignments aboard ships were called TAD (Temporary Additional Duty) trips from Rota, Spain, and I was the only CT on board the Wood for 3 months.
All of my equipment on the ship was in an air-conditioned 'van' (an aluminum-skinned equipment shelter) tucked away in the old DASH hanger (Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter). The remote controlled helicopters had been replaced with ASROCs (Anti-Submarine Rockets) and the small hanger was used by the Naval Security Group when our equipment was installed on a destroyer. On some ships the hanger had been turned into a fancy 'crew's lounge' complete with wet bar and stereo system and they were quite unhappy when the CT's showed up. The Wood had not remodeled the hanger, though, and there were no hard feelings about having CT's on board. My job was to maintain the gear in working order, doing repairs when needed.

The Wood was so crowded that some of the crew were hot-racking in the berthing spaces ('hot-racking' is sharing a bunk with someone on a different work schedule). I discovered that there were bunks welded three-high on the front starboard side of the hanger, so I made the hanger my home. However, the DASH hanger wasn't really meant to be a living space. The only access I had into the rest of the ship was through a watertight door in the front bulkhead of the hanger, across the open ASROC deck past the big rocket launcher, and through another watertight door into the passageway leading to the ship's radio room. During storms I rigged a line from the hanger across the open deck so I wouldn't get knocked overboard when I went below for chow!

The equipment I maintained was mostly a lot of receivers, so I usually spent my days SWLing, listening to the ham bands, or copying various RTTY signals. The ship's Operations Officer was also a ham and one of the few people on board with a security clearance to be in the 'van'. We got on the air a few times in the ham bands using one of the ship's URC-32 HF transceivers. The ship spent most of that summer going from one Mediterranean port to another, showing the U.S. Navy presence. I was having a heck of a good time!

The USS Wood was an old destroyer and was always having problems of one kind or another. We were usually on 'water-hours' in the hot summer since the fresh-water evaporators could barely keep up with the needs of the ship's boilers, never mind supplying daily showers for the crew! 'Water-hours' varied but usually meant a 'Navy shower' every other or every third day, and a Navy-shower was 30 seconds of water to wash, and 30 seconds to rinse.

A time came when we were to participate in a big NATO exercise in the Eastern Med, and the USS Wood was designated as a 'bad guy'. Our mission was to shadow the NATO taskforce, hiding and pretending to be a ship from an enemy navy. When the exercise started, all the other U.S. ships sailed off into the sunset and left us behind.

As luck would have it, at that very moment something went wrong down in the engine room and they 'salted the boilers', contaminating the fresh water with seawater. We were dead in the water in a major shipping lane and it was late afternoon. Restoring normal power to the ship was now 8 or 10 hours away. This class of destroyers had two emergency generators on board, so we should have had electrical power for navigation lights and communications. However, one generator was down for critical parts (I heard it was a bearing), and the other one wouldn't start! There we were, a U.S. Navy destroyer adrift in a shipping lane with no power, lights, or radios, and no one expecting us to be anywhere soon.

Things started getting a little strange on board. With no ventilation in below-deck spaces and no jobs to do, everyone came up and started hanging around on the weather-decks. The freezers were warming up so cases and cases of ice-cream in Dixie-cups were being passed up from the mess-deck for the crew to eat. It was a race to eat them before everything melted! The empties were tossed over the side and soon the ship was surrounded by a 10-foot wide belt of floating Dixie-cups, paper lids, and little wooden spoons. It was quite a sight.

Well, there WAS one other vessel in the area that day. It was the ever-present Soviet ship that shadowed our fleet for real. The Russian destroyer had initially sailed off with the Taskforce, but they must have been curious about the lone tin-can staying behind because they came back to check us out. At about the same time, someone using the 20-power Big-Eyes on the flying bridge spotted a big, BIG freighter on the horizon heading our way, directly at us. Our Signalmen had some battery-powered flashing lanterns and started 'talking' in Morse to the Russians. It was a good thing that we had that language in common! The destroyer circled us a few times, saw the impending doom and went charging off directly toward the freighter, zigzagging back and forth across her path until someone on the bridge finally changed course to go past us instead of through us! The Russian tin-can stayed with us that night until we got our boilers back up.

During the Cold-war years a lot of unpleasant things happened between our two navies, but I always think of that Russian destroyer crew guarding us when we were in trouble, regardless of the flags we sailed under.

73 - Glenn AE0Q

(ex GM5BKC, ZB2WZ, SV0WY, WA0VPK)

(ex CTM2, NSGA Rota, NSGA Edzell; DirSup DD-873, DD-715, DD-818, DE-1044, DE-1067, DLG-32)
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So, is Morse Code really that slow? Not compared to text messaging, which a lot of cellfone owners use. On Friday evening, May 13 (2005), Jay Leno sponsored a Text Messaging vs Morse Code "Shoot Out" on the Tonight Show, here is a link to the video of that speed contest (Morse Code won easily):

Video Link

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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments

Submitted By: Seth Davis

posted on 1/2/2007 @ 2:42:11 PM

Rated Blog Entry

You're right, Kim, the editor (me) should put this story in print. And I will! Thanks for the comment.

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Submitted By: Kim Price

posted on 12/31/2006 @ 11:42:16 AM

Rated Blog Entry

Great story - your hub editor needs to put it in the print version (hint)

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Submitted By: Gladys Mercier

posted on 12/28/2006 @ 7:08:48 PM

Rated Blog Entry

Wow, that is quite a story.It gave me goose bumps!

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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments

CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Glenn Pladsen

Arvada , CO

Glenn Pladsen has posted 3 blog entries and 7 comments since joining on 12/22/2006. Glenn Pladsen 's average blog rating is 5.

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