View Full Version : Shit Fist
ZonieDiver
11-05-2012, 22:05
I went to the LA Maritime Museum in San Pedro yesterday. Interesting place. They have a "Radio Room" staffed by "HAM" operators. While I was standing there, one of them put a key up on the window sill.
I started keying "International Maurice" - though it has been 40+ years since 05B at Bragg, and about 32 since I keyed on an ODA... as an 11C4S.
The old guy said, "Your 'dashes' should be three times as long as your 'dots'." I told him it had beeen 40+ years, and that I was told I was a 'shit fist' even then!
I was amazed at how much came to me when the key was under my fingers!
Shit fist or not.
2018commo
11-05-2012, 22:12
QSF K
mark46th
11-05-2012, 23:40
I catch myself listening to dit's and dah's on radio and TV programs then saying the letters and numbers out loud....
Ret10Echo
11-06-2012, 02:45
Alas a dying art.... :(
ZD after that much time in a room with headsets on...those dits and dahs are burned in our minds forever :D
Badger52
11-06-2012, 07:17
Alas a dying art.... :(
Even with no-code licensing now many amateurs are starting to take it up, or rehone old skills. During several of the solar events this past year, the code was the only thing left still being heard.
:lifter
mojaveman
11-06-2012, 11:13
There was a time when I could send and receive 15/15 and whenever I listen to it again it comes back. Funny because after I completed 18E training I never touched a leg key again other than practicing once in awhile. When the DMDG came around I think a lot of guys were happy.
It's not dead, just tune in on the HF bands. It is still there. And it still gets through. I even have the AA9PW Ham Morse app on my phone. Call me a masochist.
Team Sergeant
12-06-2012, 21:03
I still have nightmares about leg keys .......
TOMAHAWK9521
12-07-2012, 00:57
It's not dead, j It is still there. And it still gets through. .
Normally I would agree. However, during a JCET to Vannuatu in '99 I was once assigned a set of useless freqs from Grp HQ. I ended up having to listen to "Air Latin America" or something like that because all I could hear was Mariachi music on those freqs. Code does not get through Mariachi music, I'm here to tell you.
Badger52
12-07-2012, 08:34
We got bad freqs again.
Those foreign broadcast stations (Voice of Russia, any number of Salsa stations) run really w i d e too.
:mad:
mark46th
12-07-2012, 09:02
My buddy and I used to tune our sets to the marine frequencies and say we were a mobile marine station in the South China Sea and talk all over the world...
I read the title and was gonna move this to the 18D forum until I saw it was about some commo s**t... :rolleyes: :D
Richard :munchin
mark46th
12-07-2012, 16:34
I thought I heard the snapping of latex gloves going on... No proctological exams needed here, move along...
MrBox2113
12-13-2012, 06:05
Not sure if anyone does anything like this, but as they don't teach us this stuff anymore I have started using this site to learn code. Hope you guys find it helpful.
http://lcwo.net/
jkirkthomas
01-28-2013, 16:50
Eliminating IMC from the 18E course was being discusssed when I was NCOIC of ITD and SF Development Branch at SWC in the early '90s, and all of us fought it the best we could, but then some time after I retired ('95) it happened anyway. Then last weekend Jack Tobin, current SFA Pres, told me that a version of the Cornish system (remember that?) is going to be re-introduced, and IMC will be an additional skill identifier for 18Es, maybe with some extra pay to go with proficiency. I dont know the truth of that (after all, Jack Tobin told me, and he . . . ), but hope it happens.
IMC is one of those skills every radio operator ought to maintain, for those times when all that other fancy shit doesn't work. I can remember times when I heard the DMDG signal loud and clear and not a thing got recorded, but at the time, fortunately, the DMDG burst was followed by IMC, and if I could hear it AT ALL, I could copy it. But then I'm a FOG, and my first radio was an AN/GRC-109, along with the AN/GRC-87. Many times I've had RF burns on my fingers from touching the end of the feed line while tuning the 109 xmtr. I'm sure all you old 05Bs remember that.
Maybe I should try and get retroactive pay for all those years I copied IMC. Could be a maybe?