SEARCHABLE CQ MAGAZINE ARCHIVE

Finding an article or an advertisement in a back issue of CQ Magazine is about to become only a mouse click away. This, as CQ Communications and Buckmaster Publishing announce plans to create a searchable on-line archive of CQ magazines back issues.

Buckmaster, which produces the Hamcall CD has for decades filmed issues of CQ onto microfiche for use by researchers and hobbyists. Buckmaster also provides advanced scanning and searching technology for on-line posting of documents for major corporations. Now this same technology will be applied to back issues of CQ.

As currently envisioned, searches will be free, while access to reading and printing specific pages will require a subscription at a nominal fee. Eventually Buckmaster plans to have every issue of CQ available dating back to the magazine's first issue in January 1945.

A beta test version covering CQ from 1990 to 2002 is already on-line. The archive may be accessed at http://www.hamcall.net/cgi-bin/cqcgi.

- CQ

Phonetic Codes

While working as a television news camerman, I arrived at an accident scene, and a cameraman from another station pulled up behind me. As I parked the news cruiser, I heard a policeman on the scanner using the radio phonetic alphabet to alert other officers. "Be aware that the Mike Echo Delta India Alpha has arrived," he said.

I approached the officer, looked him in the eye and said, "You might be surprised to know that some of us in the Mike Echo Delta India Alpha can Sierra Papa Echo Lima Lima."

- W3LAP

HAM help to a Sailor

In 1982-83 I was working in the Maldives in the middle of the Indian Ocean, for the telepone company. I had set up an Amateur Radio station (8Q7BT) and had two HF rigs with one 3-el tribander and a longwire, plus VHF and UHF, with az/el rotators for Oscar satellite working.

One day whilst at work, I received a frantic phone call from a Ship to Shore radio station in Hong Kong, which was also operated by the same company I work for. They were looking for the contact details of the Maldives Ship-Shore HF radio station. I informed that no such thing existed.

The Hong Kong Maritime radio station proceeded to tell me about their dilemma: A freighter in rough seas off the coast of Yemen had put out a distress call. A sailor had slipped on a ladder, put a leg between the rungs, and then fell backwards down the ladder. He was suffering severe compound fractures of all three major bones in his right leg. The ship was more than 10 hours from any port, let alone any port with emergency medical facilities.

The Hong Kong maritime station had been called by the authorities in the Gulf area, who had initially picked up the distress call. But the skip distances meant that the Gulf stations were losing contact with the vessel. Hong Kong were trying to maintain contact with the vessel too, but losing the signal on all maritime frequencies.

I advised Hong Kong of my own HF station capabilities. They asked me to help. I set off from the office, travelling home on a bicycle. (Male (pronounced "mah-lay"), the capital island of the Maldives, had very few cars, so I made the journey at high speed on my trusty bicycle. Once at home, I called Hong Kong by phone, and started tuning around the Maritime frequency they had been listening on. The original plan was to have the ship change frequency to an amateur band. However, I made a call to the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and requested permission to operate outside my permitted bands, in the Maritime frequencies. Permission was granted, and I responded to the ship. Generally good signals in both directions, but with quite deep fading from time to time. I acted as a relay between medical staff in Hong Kong and the ship.

The situation was made more difficult because the crew of the ship all spoke Portugese, and Farsi, with a tiny smattering of English. I speak English, French, German, and a small amount of Turkish.

Minutes later, I was joined at my home by a truckload of soldiers from the Maldives National Security Service. And seconds later, joined by the Minister of Posts and Telecoms himself, and the Chief Technical officer from the United Nations Development Programme office. (Hey, it's a small island: Word gets around fast!).

One of the soldiers was a good translator from Farsi to English, and so we continued to relay messages from medical staff in Hong Kong to the ship.

More than an hour later, the radio conditions between my station and the ship took a dive. We tried to find a better frequency, without success. None of the other ship-shore stations could hear the ship either.

Out of desperation, I began to think of other avenues, and decided to have my staff at the office try to contact the US Military at Diego Garcia by using Telex. We got through, and explained the predicament. They were initially very annoyed that we'd called them. Showed no interest in assisting. They quoted such things as national security, and safety of their military staff. They were unwilling to disclose the location of their ships or other resources. However, in the end, I dictated to them the last known position and heading of the vessel, and the latest medical report on the condition of the crewmember, and asked them to relay it to their Navy and/or Coastguard operations.

HF conditions to the ship deteriorated further. The ship continued to steam at maximum speed towards the nearest port.

Everyone at my house was depressed. The medical opinion was that, given the lack of proper facilities, and the condition of the leg, and the failed attempts to stop the haemorrhage, the sailor would not survive the night on the ship. We collected contact details for the team involved in the relay, and then disbanded. I kept a listening watch on HF for the ship.

At midnight (5 hours after the relay effort was disbanded) the station watchkeeper at my office called me at home to advise that he'd received a 1-line telex from what appeared to be the Pentagon, stating "with respect to the incident yesterday evening, the subject has been airlifted from the vessel".

A further 24 hours later, another inocuous 1-line telex message arrived saying "subject is expected to fully recover. Amputation of the leg was performed at sea. "No further communications from Diego Garcia or the Ship-Shore stations.

All I can say is, thank goodness I'd done the "general coverage TX' modification to the Icom 720A.Iain , G4JMM/6Y5 Kingston, Jamaica.

Story from G4JMM/6Y5

When I was 11 years old (in early 1972), I walked into the garage at home, and found that my dad, (who had no interest in ham radio or electronics), was dismantling an old radio with tubes in it. (EF80, ECH81 and the like). He was just collecting the nuts, bolts and aluminium (that's how they spell it in UK!). I started asking him about how radio worked, and he told me what he knew, (not much!).

The next birthday I was given an electronics experiment kit. The next Christmas I found an electronics toolkit under the tree.

All our neighbours got to hear about my interest in radio & electronics, and one of them brought round an old radio covering "Long Wave and Medium Wave", hoping that I could repair it. It wasn't a difficult repair: The waxed string from the tuning knob to the variable capacitor and to the scale pointer had broken. Not even anything to do with electronics or radio, really. But then the fun started:...

I replaced the string, worked out how many turns to put round the capstan, and how tight the spring should be. Then, not having a signal generator, I tried to calibrate the sliding pointer against known stations on Medium Wave. Starting off at the high frequency end of medium wave, I tuned in the first station I found, and was amazed to hear the person talking about street names which I recognised in our neighbourhood. That was strange: We didn't have a broadcast station covering our town.

I called my father, he made a phone call or two, and came back with the answer that this was local Radio Amateurs talking to each other on "Top Band". I showed some interest, and a week later, I received a copy of the RSGB Radio Communication Handbook through the mail, plus a contact name for the local Amateur Radio club.

The rest is history, as they say... I guess that answers 'how', not 'why', but thought you might be interested.

It turns out that the knowledge gained through Amateur Radio helped me immensely. I ended up taking up telecommunications as a profession, and am still in the same business. Retrospectively, that is probably the answer to 'why'.

The hobby has always been fascinating to me. One of my most memorable moments was helping to save the life of a critically injured sailor at sea.

- Iain, G4JMM/6Y5 (Kingston, Jamaica)

Bus Riding

I had the pleasure of riding the bus to and from work for about three months in which my car was down. I normaly carry my Kenwood D7 on my hip along with a etrex GPS for APRS use. I was readjusting the tone for a IRLP link when I heard a station from germany on the air speaking to another ham about his home town. I looked up and there standing in front of me was a gent about my age with a look on his face. "Can I help you?" I asked him, thinkning that he was going to ask me to turn it down or off as not to disturbe the bus. He started in with half german and half english about my "cell" I gathered from the english side that he had heard the german side of the conversation and had herd his home town named in the QSO. I keyed up in a break and gave my call and asked if the german station was willing to talk to this gentleman. He put him on and I handed the gent in front of me my rig and showed him how to key up and the conversation started with rapid fire german. The whole bus by that time was looking at the two us as I kept an eye on the conversation and ID once in a while. The conversation lasted about three minutes and he handed me back the radio and then hugged me! He explained that this simple conversation had just sent the ham to make a call to his parents in another town to assure them that he was alright and safe. He thanked me for the use of my "Cell" and then we arrived at your stop and all the passengers got off and I never saw him again but had a few paeople ask me about what kind of phone let me call all the way to germany. I made explanations and handed them a few of my QSO cards and bade them a safe trip and hurried off to work. About three months later I got an email from the staiton in germany that had called the folks. He said the Gent was back home and now operating his own station!
Wow who would have thought that a mere "cell" would do all that?

- Peter

Finland and France are not alone in saying goodbye to Morse code testing. So has a nation down-under.

On June 4th New Zealand's Telecommunications regulators issued a decree that says Morse proficiency testing has ended and that New Zealand Limited Class operators will soom have access to the high frequency bands. In fact, regulators have decided to upgrade Limited Class operators to the New Zealand General Class.

According to the notice, operators will not be required change their callsigns or take any other action.. The new rules go into effect on June 17th.

(ZL2BHF)

MORE COUNTRIES DROP CW

More restructuring has taken place in Europe. The GB2RS reports that Finland has now officially dropped the Morse code requirement for that nations hams to have access to the High Frequency bands. GB2RS says that Finland actually deleted the Morse requirement on the 1st of November of 2003. Now, with the latest rules revisions there are now there are only two classes of amateur license in that European nation.

Also from GB2RS word that former French Class 2 licensees with F1 and F4 callsign prefixes are now being heard on the High Frequency bands. According to the French national amateur radio society, this change was implemented on May 16th.

But C-W is far from dying or dead on the other side of the Atlantic. In fact the fourth European High Speed Telegraphy Championships take place the 15th through the 19th of September in Montenegro and Serbia.

(GB2RS)