"BNB Sound" wrote in message
oups.com...
So, what else is out there. I know the military has always been
heavily invested in radio gear, but what else was (and is?) there?
Jon
KC2PNF


AT&T High Seas Radiotelephone Service could be used by any ship with
high-frequency single side band radiotelephone service. Worldwide in scope,
the service provided two-way voice communication between ships on the high
seas and telephones on land, at sea or in the air.

While I was employed at A.T.&T. I was given a tour of their international
operating center in Pittsburg PA in the early 1990's. Being a ham I most
enjoyed watching the operators at the High Seas Bureau taking calls from and
to ships at sea.

Staffed 24-hours a day, 365-days per year, AT&T operators at Pittsburg PA
provided mainland telephone connection to ships at sea. In many
circumstances, operators handled distress calls. The operations staff was
trained for all emergency situations and alerted the Coast Guard of pending
crises.

AT&T High Seas Radiotelephone Facility - was the only facility of its kind
in the world, provided lifesaving, two way voice radio-telephone service
communication between ships at sea, or aircraft, and telephones on land,
sea, or in the air.

WOO was the radio call sign of the now-defunct AT&T High Seas Service. The
radiotelephone transmitter station was in Ocean Gate, NJ ( 39°55'38?N,
74°06'55?W) and the receiver station was in Navesink, New Jersey, USA.

Before satellite communication systems were widely available, the only way
ships at sea had to communicate with the rest of the world was via HF SSB
connections to land stations.

The AT&T high seas service consisted of WOO Ocean Gate, New Jersey and her
sister stations WOM Pennsuco, Florida (Miami, Florida) and KMI Dixon,
California (Point Reyes, California). A vessel at sea would make radio
contact with one of those stations, and the operator would patch the radio
connection though to a telephone call made over the PSTN. The charges were
typically settled by making the landline connection a collect call. Larger
vessels maintained accounts with AT&T.

In the years prior to regular telephone service being available in Mexican
towns such as La Paz, Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta, KMI provided
service to certain hotels and resorts in those locations. Sometimes a hotel
would register a land based transmitter as a yacht, and give it a fictitious
name in order to provide phone service to their customers.

AT&T shut down all three stations on November 9, 1999. It is believed that
the only remaining commercial sources of high seas high frequency
radiotelephone service are WLO in Mobile, Alabama and KLB in Seattle,
Washington. AT&T now uses "Mobile Satellite Services".

To use the High Seas Radiotelephone Service, each ship's radio officer would
select a channel to call one of AT&T's Coast Stations. A technician at the
Coast Station will then pass the call to an AT&T operator in Pittsburg PA .
The person at sea would tell the operator the number he or she was trying to
reach and the call was connected. People on land would call 1-800-Sea-Call
and tell the operator in Pittsburg PA the name and callsign of the vessel
they wanted to call.

Ace - WH2T


..

"BNB Sound" wrote in message
oups.com...
I've been an amateur operator for a little over a year now and one of
my favorite parts of the hobby is soaking up stories from previous
decades. One of the things I'm curious about is professional HF work.
I've heard it mentioned in passing that when the early trans-Atlantic
cables went down they would shift to HF circuits as available to try
and pick up the slack.

So, what else is out there. I know the military has always been
heavily invested in radio gear, but what else was (and is?) there? I'd
love to hear from anyone who ever brought home a paycheck for working
the airwaves.

I used to run a company in Tanzania that supplied HF radio kit to NGO's
Mines, Aid agencies, Safari companies,Farms, Shipping and transportation
companies. Not much of a mobile phone network away from the cities.
Also we provided a HF email service called Bushmail, similar to Sailmail
using Pactor 3 SCS modems for HF email.

HF kit that we supplied Kenwood TRC 80/TK88, Icom IC-78/IC-718, also some
kit from Codan and Motorola

So, yes there is a business market for HF comms kit in Africa.

Robin

On Wed, 9 May 2007 15:23:30 EDT, AF6AY wrote:

On a more consumer-oriented
basis, the broadcasting industry is generally wondering
what will become of all those old analog TV transmitters
after the transition to HDTV in the USA. There's no easy
answer for that, either.

Do not confuse digital television (DTV) with high definition TV (HDTV)
which is a subset of DTV. All TV stations will be required to use DTV
but the use of HDTV is optional.

As far as the transmitters go, in general they are being junked
because most of them are near the end of their useful lives and are
held together by duct tape and baling wire in anticipation of the
transition.

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
Life Member - Society of Broadcast Engineers

On Sat, 12 May 2007 04:47:18 EDT, "Dr.Ace" wrote:

AT&T High Seas Radiotelephone Facility - was the only facility of its kind
in the world, provided lifesaving, two way voice radio-telephone service
communication between ships at sea, or aircraft, and telephones on land,
sea, or in the air.

I beg your pardon - most if not all major coast stations throughout
the world had that capability. I was involved with the Israeli coast
station - 4XO in Haifa (Haifa Radio) - in the mid-60s and I knew that
all of the European coast stations had HF SSB voice service available
as well.

Before satellite communication systems were widely available, the only way
ships at sea had to communicate with the rest of the world was via HF SSB
connections to land stations.

Uh, are we forgetting CW and RTTY (later SITOR) TELEX HF which did not
use AT&T's network?

Sometimes a hotel
would register a land based transmitter as a yacht, and give it a fictitious
name in order to provide phone service to their customers.

Two brothels in a remote area of Nevada (where such activity was
legal) tried that in the late 70s and the VHF Marine carrier who
colluded in that lost his license and equipment as a result.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

Phil Kane wrote:
On Sat, 12 May 2007 04:47:18 EDT, "Dr.Ace" wrote:


snip


Sometimes a hotel
would register a land based transmitter as a yacht, and give it a fictitious
name in order to provide phone service to their customers.

Two brothels in a remote area of Nevada (where such activity was
legal) tried that in the late 70s and the VHF Marine carrier who
colluded in that lost his license and equipment as a result.

They yacht to have known better than that.... ;^)

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -

Phil Kane wrote on Sun, 27 May 2007
23:00:15 EDT:
On Wed, 9 May 2007 15:23:30 EDT, AF6AY wrote:

On a more consumer-oriented
basis, the broadcasting industry is generally wondering
what will become of all those old analog TV transmitters
after the transition to HDTV in the USA. There's no easy
answer for that, either.

Do not confuse digital television (DTV) with high definition TV (HDTV)
which is a subset of DTV. All TV stations will be required to use DTV
but the use of HDTV is optional.

I made an "aside" for comparison and haven't confused anything.
Firstly, DTV isn't about using HF spectrum...I am very aware of that.
The transmitters for television represent a sizeable capital
investment by broadcasters. I am aware of the complaints of the
broadcast industry (pro and con) during the entire time of the "Grand
Alliance" testing that led to the eventual DTV broadcasting format
that went into broadcasting regulations. It's been years since I
"rode gain" at a control console or "took" a particular camera or tape
unit, but I do
know something of the MPEG video transport format even though it
generally gives me considerable confusion every time I've studied
it. :-)

The MPEG video transport format can accommodate four different pixel
arrangements and DTV receivers are supposed to be built to decode all
of them automatically. That video format includes the old-style
analog format (converted from analog to digital) on up to the High-
Definition TV which is considered by most consumers as "wide screen
TV." The DTV transmitters themselves handle the entirety of the video
format sent up from the studios,including the quadraphonic sound, text
for hearing impaired, and whatever else the studio central control
sticks in there.

In the old TV transmitter arrangements of any appreciable power, they
were almost always TWO, one for video (AM sorta SSB called "vestigal
sideband"), one for audio (FM) with a Diplexer (passive filter) to
connect
both to the same wideband antenna. The DTV transmitter is a single
one since ALL of the modulation information is conveyed by it, no
"extra" one for sound, seldom any need for an external filter, let
alone
a diplexer. The internal design of the DTV transmitter HAS to be
different than either the AM video or FM aural transmitters by nature
of the modulation mode. But, that DTV transmitter can handle ANY of
the video transport formats automatically. Whether the TV station
central engineering sends old NTSC video converted to "low grade"
digital format or has gone all-out to run everything in "high
definition"
doesn't bother the DTV transmitter. The end result for conversion to
DTV was a replacement of the transmitters (old) by one new one.
Draconian for the broadcasters but visual and audible pleasure for
millions of consumers receiving the DTV.

As far as the transmitters go, in general they are being junked
because most of them are near the end of their useful lives and are
held together by duct tape and baling wire in anticipation of the
transition.

I disagree with that "junk" figurative phrasing. Here in Los Angeles,
there is one central TV (and most FM) broadcast transmitter site,
Mount Wilson. It's been a few years since I was up there but all the
stations (7 on VHF, 4 on UHF) had good, long-lasting transmitters.
At the time KTLA (ch. 5) was beginning to convert to DTV; they were
a pioneer broadcaster in L.A. and this year is their 60th anniversary
here. Both studio and transmitter sites have excellent equipment and
their DTV signal is absolutely HDTV. Their morning show content
is, in my view, JUNK, but that is CONTENT, having nothing to do with
equipment or signal quality...a personal critique.

What used to be a TV "leader" in quality of equipment, NBC (ch. 4)
under the 'general's" eye of RCA, hasn't fully converted to HDTV in
their studios. NBC evening news is HDTV but local news is still
narrow TV. NBC is owned by General Electric and "RCA" exists solely
as a brand name now. I think...haven't kept up on the mergers and
acquisitions of large corporations lately. :-)

TV is above 30 MHz, definitely not in the HF spectrum. However the
type and kind of modulation carried by any transmitter will determine
whether or not it will be "junked" for a new replacement, NOT it's
supposed "held together by tape and bailing wire." If hams could run
4 KW PEP SSB on HF (not in the USA) then the ages-old Western
Electric LD-T2 SSB transmitter would be a great surplus bargain for
them...Class A stages up to the PA which is AB_2, push-button QSY
to any one of 10 pre-tuned frequencies. Problem is, the SSB format is
12 KHz wide and has internal frequency multiplexing for four 3 KHz
audio inputs combined for the output SSB modulation. A no-no for
amateur radio use, even if well-designed after WW2 by WE. Too much
modification required to fit the "tranditional" and technical specs
even
if a superb design for its intended use. That was the general point
I
was making, not something about the video format of DTV.

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
Life Member - Society of Broadcast Engineers

73, Len AF6AY
Life Member - Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers


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