Just updated ( again ) full detail of QM2/QM meetings in L.A.

[travel-to-go]

Thanks so much for the link. I passed it on to my husband who is an amateur radio operator. He was fascinated by the article. Karie, are you a ham?

 

Beth in Tennessee

Define ham <G>

Well, I like good ol' country ham!

Actually, I never got my ticket. Years ago, (Too many to count) I worked up to my five words a minute, got my theory all down, and ended up in the hospital with mono. I used to operate using another person's station license on the 40 meter afternoon traffic nets. (He was in the shack with me, and after all, I DID have a restricted radiotelephone operator's permit! Still do! I followed all the rules, and there were more than a few W4's who knew me! Some, I still stay in touch with!) I've put up a di-pole or two, and swear one of these days I am going to get my ticket. I've been to the ARRL (W1AW) who aren't too far from my office. I am a cellular wireless technician, Been in the wireline and wireless business 27 years, so of course communications protocols are not foreign to me! Was also a radio officer in the Civil Air Patrol a lot of years ago.

I passed those links along to a tech in West Palm Beach FL today and a long-time HAM (and radio engineer) at work. The oldtimer was pretty excited to download the CW of QM's last transmission going down the Hudson.

I usually listen to the hurricane net (via the web- it is webcast) and still know most of the lingo, some of the Q codes and such. I've chatted wth a communications officer on one of our cruises (To make this cruise related!) but most everything these days is by satellite. Even the coast guard no longer does CW. They turned down the last CW buoy transmission a few years ago. It was marvelous looking at those pictrues, listening to the recording of the CW transmission and imagining the radio operator copying the code and writing it out longhand for passengers. For me, more than anything else, this really made the era of the QM come alive. It was almost like being there, hearing it, just as it sounded back then, with one radio off the carrier wave slightly (those things were murder to keep tuned!)

I just imagined myself being a radio op and trying to copy that at that speed and get it right. Of course in my business I still hang around a lot of HAMs. I plan on getting my GROL one of these day,s but you have to do the marine endorsement, which is a pain. A lot of memorizing!

 

Karie,

Who WILL get her ticket before she's ninety! (and def an XYL, not a YL!!)

73's!

[imacruizer]

Karie, how interesting! My husband enjoyed an appreciated your response.

 

Beth

[stowaway2k]

As long as we're on this subject... ;)

 

In 1978, as QE2 was on her world cruise near Tahiti, her radio room received a signal transmitted by the Queen Mary during the second world war.

 

This is mentioned in the memoirs of QE2's captain from that time, Robert Arnott.

 

He doesn't say what the message was, perhaps because it was sent during wartime, but he does say that they knew it was from the Queen Mary because the signal included her call letters GBTT

[guernseyguy]

they knew it was from the Queen Mary because the signal included her call letters GBTT

 

Curioser and curioser....the QE2's call sign is also GBTT - she took it over from the Queen Mary....

 

Peter