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Old August 23rd 06, 09:22 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna,rec.radio.amateur.policy,rec.radio.scanner,rec.radio.swap
Dave Oldridge Dave Oldridge is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 234
Default If you had to use CW to save someone's life, would that person die?

wrote in
:

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:10:08 GMT, Dave Oldridge
wrote:

"Woody" wrote in
news:%RJGg.27319$uV.13889@trnddc08:

Well there ya have it folks.... 50wpm saves lives. So how does it
work? Turn up the speaker really loud and place it [face down] on
the person's chest, while
an op in South America tapped out universally accepted words that
would mimic an atrioventricular rhythm?


Did someone drop you on your head at birth?

wy wouldyou ask that did someone drop you on yours?


No, but when I'm confronted with TOTAL stupidity, it's a possible
explanotion for it.

The reason 50wpm can save
lives is probably a bit complex for you to get both your functioning
neurons around, but believe me, having done CW for a living for some
decades I do know that it can save lives.

a date when was the last Ham Morse saved a life at any speed

car and drive down to the local EMS agency, and bring them to you.
Life saved!
I'm impressed.
rb


So apparently YOUR answer to this question is that you couldn't send
your name if your own life depended on it.


I can send anything I like the proof of that is before you I have a pc

Believe me, I get it. I don't think CW ought to be mandatory and it
isn't where I live.

good for you
I do think people who intend to use it should learn
how to use it properly, though. For CW to be effective, both
operators must be competent. IF they are, they can often transcend
barriers of language that only digital modes can get over. In my own
case, the fact that I could read CW and read written Spanish a bit
once enabled me to render aid to a burning fishing boat. (There were
other more routine examples of where the language barrier was crossed
by CW--many messages I copied were not in English at all, but were
readable by their end recipients).

ok you have a date for that I'll accept it as a life saved by CW if
you do
http://kb9rqz.blogspot.com/

Not an exact date, though it's probably in the archives of the Canadian
Coast Guard, my employer at the time. Hey, I worked at Halifax Coast
Guard radio from 1977 until 1995, 18 years at the one station. We
handled a number of SOS calls on CW and were able to save lives some of
the time (not always. alas). But with trained operators on both ends of
the signal path, CW was pretty much always an easier go than SSB. And
SITOR was pretty much a joke. Half the ships couldn't get it going.

INMARSAT is what put CW out of business in the marine industry. And a
nasty solar flare or two could put INMARSAT out of business. You pays
your money and you takes your chances. I'm not sure that a ship equipped
with a complex satellite radio with a lot of moving parts and a
technician is all that much better off than a ship was when they were
equipped with an MF-HF CW and SSB radio station and a radio operator who
was also a trained technician. All is well until something breaks and
the nearest part is 500 miles away over water.


CW was still in use for a some ship-to-shore work when I retired in 1995.

When I went to the high arctic in 1964 it was our main means of
communication with the south. We eventually converted that to RTTY and
SSB, but neither was really as effective as the CW that preceded.

Now, today, we have such things a PSK31 to do much of the grunt work.
That will work as well as CW in most cases, I find.

--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667