Buck wrote:
People are listening and the word "emergency" will get attention!
Even appliance operators can answer that call. Could they answer you
if you sent a distress in CW?

In 1995 the ARRL commissioned a survey of ham radio operators licensed
in the U.S. by having passed a morse code test. (5wpm on up). 64% of the
hams responded that they NEVER used morse code. The ARRL published the
results as 36% responded that they used morse code at least occasionaly,
but the truth remains that over 10 years ago, you had a one in three
chance of the person hearing you being able to copy your message.

That's why there was an international agreed to distress call, although
at the time, radio operators were NOT obligated to listen or act upon it.
"CQD" was not a distress call per se, it was Marconi company code for
"assistance" as in "CQD CQD CQD" meaning send assistance and "CQD?" meaning
"do you need assistance".

Telefunken operators were not privy to Marconi company internal codes,
and were forbidden by company policy (and Marconi's) to answer them.
Of course nothing is secret for long and it is quite likely that most
Telefunken operators heard the CQD call from the Titanic, understood it
and listened, although none of them were going to do anything about it.

When the Titanic operator sent the new distress call (which I can't write
due to text limitations) of ...---... as one continuous string (not the letter
S followed by the letter O followed by the letter S), anyone listening
knew what they were sending. The confusion to the reader of this is because
it is written as SOS with a line on top of all three, so if I could do it,
---
it would look like: SOS but here it looks like I am underlining with.

However the Telefunken radio operator on the Californian may or may
not of heard it, but he was forbidden by company policy to reply or
tell anyone about it.

The Cape Race story and his having gone to sleep was a cover-up.

For sake of brevity, I'm not going to repeat the entire story and references
here, but you can find them in my blog entry I pointed to in a previous
post.

So while sending SOS or any other morse code signal would be a good idea
if you have a CW only radio, calling "MAYDAY" in voice would be much more
likely to be answered.

It also depends upon where you are. Here in Israel, calling anything on
CB channel 9 will probably not be heard, calling MAYDAY on 2 meters, will
get you a "roger beep" from the repeater and nothing else. You'd better
have a cell phone and know how to call for help. 911 (U.S.) and 999 (U.K,)
are not used here, 112 should work on GSM phones, but the real numbers
are 101, 102 and 103.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/