[Today’s run: rest day]
I fired up the ham radio this morning.
I went through a bit of a drought in activity in May and June, don’t know why. But today I got on 40 meters and had a nice chat with k8ehe, Terry in Dublin, OH.
He is retired and works as a lay minister at a church where he’s been attending for a long time.
I told him about visiting Dublin around 20 years ago for some training sessions with OCLC and he knew where that was.
I told him we had fed the chickens and that my wife keeps chickens and bees. He said that fresh eggs and honey sounded good to him.
This was all in morse code, so the conversation is kind of slow and simple. I was using my homebrew straight key, and my arm started to get a bit tired. I haven’t done much straight key work recently.
Besides the physical effort, the other part of morse code that keeps things slow is trying to remember how to spell words as you send them. I have an electronic gizmo that shows me the letters as I send them. That is very helpful because my spelling is more visual-based. I can see if it “looks right” as I go. Without that I frequently get into spelling trouble.
4 replies on “On the radio”
Back in the day did telegraph keyers (wrong term?) get Carpal tunnel? I have co-workers who have it from keyboard use and I see grocery clerk scan using hand brace/bandage. Maybe folks got it but had no choice – you have to work to eat – so just put up with it.
Another thing, seems to me Morse code would lend itself to shorthand akin to texting. Too bad some of those terms were not retained in the popular texting lexicon. Tangentially, imagine someone from the Morse days being transported into the world of today and seeing people walking the sidewalks slowly, somewhat irregularly, meandering, face down with thumbs pinching a piece of plastic as they squint into a tiny screen – wondering why the future did not have a better means of communicating (like the _phone_).
You are right with both observations.
The telegraphers would get “glass arm”. It may not be exactly the same because with telegraphy you don’t use the individual fingers like you do with typing or piano playing. But the repetitive wrist action could be a problem. By the time we get to WW2, they had done studies about how to hold your arm and the way to set up a work environment to try to avoid that kind of problem. But yes, there definitely was a problem with repetitive motion injury.
As for shorthand, right again. There are all sorts of shorthand. I don’t think the real Western Union types could use shorthand in sending the text of a message but they did use lots of it in the traffic routing parts of the conversation. And ham radio types use lots of shorthand too. That is offset, however with certain parts being traditionally repeated to make sure they get through.
rst is a signal report system. 589 is a good strong signal.
So he says he is receiving me well.
QTH means home or location
hw cpi is “how copy”
AR is kind of like “over”
DE is “from”
HR is “here”
Some abbreviations you just pick up from the context and
some are more formalized.
after I talked he replied:
etc.
I had reported that my equipment is a TenTec Century 21 and
my antenna is a G5RV (a type of wire antenna).
He tells me his equipment and output.
ES means “and”
FB means “fine business”… a general purpose affirmative
SNDS in this case would be “sounds” and not “sends”
It is kind of inefficient for him to repeat back my
equipment information, but sometimes people do that
to further the conversation. So there is a mix of
abbreviation, repetition and just social convention.
One other thing!
Why did he say “how cpi” instead of “how cpy”? Same number
of letters right?
Morse code has shorter encoding for frequently used letters.
Sending a Y is more work then sending an I.
A beginning morse code user quickly learns that some
concepts in English use longer words too. Like
“tomorrow” and “yesterday” for example. So you might
use an abbreviation or find a way to avoid those words
by the way you phrase a statement.
Being from Ohio has an advantage over Mississippi in this regard. Thanks for the lesson on shorthand! TTFN