uhhhh..... good point. Not sure what your point applies to... but OK, we all
agree that radio is a useful invention.
What were we talking about again?

rb


"David G. Nagel" wrote in message
...
an old friend wrote:
David G. Nagel wrote:

Cecil Moore wrote:


Dirk wrote:


Ham's care more about operating appliances than knowing how to save a
lives.


How many times in the entire history of amateur radio
has a ham used CW to actually save a life? One would
think there would be a book full of examples by now.

A ham operator intercepted the SOS from the RMS Titanic.

how many life were saved thereby the Carpathia wheard the call and
arrived to save some folks what role did the ARS playing in saving even
one life that sorry day?


We aren't talking about failure to receive a CW SOS. Those ships that
responded did so after receiving word of the sinking by radio. They saved
many lives from the lifeboats which would otherwise have been lost to the
cold.

Dave N

"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
m...
Reg Edwards wrote:
But there's nothing to prevent people who appreciate and love the
language of Morse, the way it sings, its universality, its beauty,
from continuing to use it way into the future.

The same is true of sailing ships, hot-air balloons,
and horses. Do what turns you on and leave the
@#$%&$ federal government out of it.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp
========================================

I like watching gleaming reciprocating stationary steam engines with 8
feet diameter flywheels. They turn me on too. The government doesn't
interfere. But there's not many about these days. ;o(

Turbines leave me cold!
----
Reg.

The Titanic knew their coordinates.... didn't slow the influx of H20....
The responding ships had radios too... didn't turn their props any
faster....

Answer to the question.... there was no system then.
CW can punch through if there is a human on the other end, where GPS/packet
says 'no signal'....
GPS is faster, where CW takes longer....
so one is obsolete, the other inferior.

rb


"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
.com...
Dave wrote:
David G. Nagel wrote:
A ham operator intercepted the SOS from the RMS Titanic.

Yep!! It happened once!

If CW had not existed at the time, how would things have
turned out differently? If the present GPS-based system
had existed at the time, how would things have turned out?
Which system is presently inferior and virtually obsolete?
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

Good Lord, are you saying that a 1 jigawatt transmitter and an Infinity
times Pi speed ham operator couldn't telepathically float a swamped ship,
and thwart hypothermia of people in the water???
How crass.

Can you tell I'm off today and quite bored? LOL
rb



"Dave" wrote in message
. ..
Cecil Moore wrote:

Dave wrote:

David G. Nagel wrote:

A ham operator intercepted the SOS from the RMS Titanic.


Yep!! It happened once!


If CW had not existed at the time, how would things have
turned out differently? If the present GPS-based system
had existed at the time, how would things have turned out?
Which system is presently inferior and virtually obsolete?

C'mon Cecil, you've been licensed as long as I have. I Know you Know CW.
Does that mean we're virtually obsolete?

RE Titanic:

The same result would have happened. The ship hit an iceberg in poor
visibility. I don't think icebergs carry GPS transponders these days.

Now, the Titanic's GPS; does it have transponder capability? The older GPS
units do not. Anyway, after the crew slipped by the iceberg that ripped it
open, the radio op gets on the air and reports "SOS" or equivalent. The
nearest ships respond. Under conditions similar to 1914{?} the Titanic
still sinks. Many people still die. But, now we know to 20 feet exactly
where the ship was when it sank.

GPS won't make a difference. Neither will CW today.

I still enjoy CW.

Hey, if an alien force ever invades our planet and demands that we pass a
40wpm code test or they will annihilate the planet, then yes, it would!
Never say never.

rb


ps:
Yeah, all is see on these groups is stupidity... might as well enjoy it.
:-)
no offense to the OP's here.... just making a generalized statement about
this whole thread and others like it.


"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
om...
Dave wrote:
C'mon Cecil, you've been licensed as long as I have. I Know you Know CW.
Does that mean we're virtually obsolete?

My favorite mode is CW and it's a fun mode but it is never
going to save the world.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

.....and ammo, for control of rabid cw ops who finally figure out there's no
one listening and come to steal said food and water....

rb

"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
. com...
Slow Code wrote:
With an attitude like that it probably won't. Better keep a microphone
handy.

Actually, what I keep handy is food and water.
--
73, Cecil, http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

Wow.... so you could almost say the reason there was such a disaster
[notwithstanding the time period and simple circumstance] is that all these
radio operators [and companies] were acting like a bunch of egotistical
morons, each thinking their way to be better, and that most
vessels communications, wireless ops and policies were almost..............
amateur........... in nature?

LOL...
rb



"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote in message
...
clfe wrote:
"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
...
It was before the Titanic hit the iceberg that the Titanic
CW operator told the Californian CW operator to get off the
air. He considered his normal Titanic CW message traffic to
have priority over any CW traffic that the Californian might
need to pass. Turns out the Californian's CW operator was
the only person in the world who could have saved the life
of the Titanic's CW operator.
--
73, Cecil, http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

In that case then - I stand corrected, I was unaware of that.

It's totaly untrue. The Californian's radio operator ignored the
Titanic's distress signals because the Titanic was a Marconi ship and
the Californian was a Telefunken ship. The operators were not allowed to
communicate with the competing company's operators under any
circumstances under penalty of being put off the ship at first landing,
with no hope of getting home or being hired by the other company.

I recently blogged about it:

http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/2006/06/22/

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/

And I say I agree with the problem that mentioned for the cw being needed
and life saving station for the pc with no code.
It'll never work and if it does it will only be working a pc and if that is
not the person then it is not the same
so you can say it didn't work anyway because it wasn't a person that needed
it.
So there.
rb

"Bill Turner" wrote in message
...
ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

On 12 Jul 2006 10:24:55 -0700, "an old freind"
wrote:

if i was at my home station is no they would not die

and I am as no code as they come I down right hate the mode and yet y
pc and station is quite able to work cw as needed to save a life if it
was needed

------------ REPLY SEPARATOR ------------

He apparently hates English too.

Bill, W6WRT

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?

Wrong theatre? OK...

Maybe if a person is trapped on a sinking ship in the Indian Ocean you, in
Siberia, could tap out a message to someone in Madagascar [who happened to
be awake at an odd hour] and that person also owned a large SAR chopper,
they could jump in it, saving the time of relaying to anyone else, and go
pluck them from certain death?

OH, or better yet... if your neighbor is also a ham.... and your wife fell
over with an AMI, you could call your neighbor, give him a freq, then the
two of you
get set up and running, then you can send a 50wpm message asking your
neighbor to call an ambulance? BTW, if the phones are down, you ask him to
get in his
car and drive down to the local EMS agency, and bring them to you. Life
saved!
I'm impressed.
rb



"Dave Oldridge" wrote in message
9...
(Dirk) wrote in :

Ham's care more about operating appliances than knowing how to save a
lives.

The person would not die on my watch, as long as I could get a signal out
and someone on the other end could copy it. I'd probably have to practice
a bit to get back up over 50wpm, but I can do 25 or 30 all day long.


--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667

Not true.... commercial stations ID with CW all the time. It's great for
zero-priority use.
rb


"Alun L. Palmer" wrote in message
. ..
"clfe" wrote in
:

"Alun L. Palmer" wrote in message
. ..
wrote in
s.com:

If you asked the same question to someone who had only passed 5 wpm
and then, like me, never used it, then I suspect the victim wouldn't
make it. But then in most countries there is NO morse code testing any
more, so there are plenty of hams now who've never learnt atall. For
decades there have been no code VHF hams in most countries anyway.


To "some" extent, I "may" have to disagree. I held a class once for "No
Code Tech" and one of the guys - a man in his 70s asked if he could go
for the code test even though I wasn't teaching code. He said he had
learned it years ago in the service - but may be rusty. Let me tell you
- when he was done testing, he had PERFECT copy. Was he practicing all
along? We'll never know - nor did I ask. He has since passed on. Some
people DO have a good memory and retain quite well. Others - lose
things almost immediately if not used. Some of us, it takes a while to
lose it and we usually do.

Lou




It is possible that someone could learn at 5wpm, not use it for years, and
still be able to use it, but I wouldn't want to bet my life on it.

More to the point is I can't magine a scenario in which CW would be the
only mode available, and that hams are about the only remaining users of
CW.