July 2023

MRHS Newsletter No. 96

Dedicated to True Believers Afloat & Ashore

An MRHS Pioneer: Co-Founder Tom Horsfall/TH

Announcement: Night of Nights XXIV

True Believer Trivia

Announcement: ENIGMA Encrypted Broadcast

Transmitter Department Report

Q-Code of the Month: QRY

RMS Titanic/MGY Hero: Harold Bride

Poet's Corner: The Radio Operator's Lament

Your MRHS "Out Standing In The Field": The Poldhu Station

The Crazy Idea Continues.

An MRHS Pioneer: Co-Founder Tom Horsfall/TH

Often in these pages we sadly honor a "Silent Key" -- a departed member of the fraternity of "Wireless Pioneers." HAPPILY, in this issue of your newsletter we honor a member of that august fraternity who is very much still alive and active in the world of wireless, MRHS Co-Founder Tom Horsfall/TH.

Enter the other co-founder, Richard Dillman/RD:

"In the summer of 1999, as Tom Horsfall and I sat across the table from the Superintendent of the Point Reyes National Seashore and his senior staff, we noticed they weren't looking at the lovingly crafted proposal for the restoration of KPH that we had taken weeks to write. Instead they were looking at us. In the eye. That's when we understood they were thinking "how crazy are these guys?" So crazy that the park might have a situation on its hands down the line? Or just crazy enough to do what they say they will and stick with the project over the long term? For reasons we have never quite understood they had the vision and, more important, the trust, to say "Sounds good. Go ahead." When they turned over the keys Tom said it was like giving the keys to the asylum to the inmates.

At first we thought the best we could hope for was to get a few of the KPH transmitters on the air on amateur frequencies, maybe even under the call sign K6KPH. And that was a stretch. Looking back now, with a dozen or more transmitters on the air from Bolinas using both Morse and RTTY, the iconic call sign KPH returned to its ancestral home, KFS and K6KPH on the air and the receive site at Point Reyes fully restored and operational, it's hard to believe how far we have come. 

Tom's motto throughout was always "it's not a crazy idea", even though more rational minds might disagree. Case in point: "It's not a crazy idea to transport two 1940s vintage Press Wireless 15kW transmitters from the KFS transmit site in Palo Alto to Bolinas - and put them on the air." But those transmitters were safely installed at Bolinas, one of them on its original KFS 12Mc frequency, blasting away every Saturday. Like so many other parts of our project that crazy idea turned into something unique in the world, in this case the only remaining PW15 in full working order, and in regular service.

There were a lot of other crazy ideas. Like the thought that we could put the 1950s vintage RCA transmitters at Bolinas back on the air. These had been abandoned in place in a marine environment for 10 years. They were so corroded the sliding doors could not be opened, the tuning controls could not be moved. Now every one of these transmitters has been brought back to full operation.

There are a lot of dedicated, extremely talented folks associated with the MRHS. But only a fraction of what we see today would have been possible without co-founder Tom Horsfall and his crazy ideas."

Thanks RD for that wonderful tribute to a true MRHS pioneer!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Night of Nights XXIV

The event that inspired Tom Horsfall/TH and Richard Dillman/RD to found the Maritime Radio Historical Society was the supposed ending of commercial maritime Morse Code services in the United States when the last Morse station at Half Moon Bay, CA suspended service on 12 July 1999. As you can see from the above article, this suspension of service was to be short-lived, and in a short time the "Wireless Giant of the Pacific," maritime coast station KPH, was brought back to life.

Each year, as the day turns from July 12 to July 13 the transmitters of KPH are brought to life once again, performing the service that they were originally designed to perform, to honor the men and women who served in the maritime radio service, afloat and ashore, for a century. This year marks the twenty-fourth year that the rituals of this now traditional celebration will be observed. For details on this years Night of Nights, click here. The MRHS web site will be updated shortly with all the details you will need to participate in Night of Nights at home. And mark your calendars for 13 July at 0001 GMT (July 12 at 5:01pm, PDT). Get those receivers and antennas ready to once again hear the "music of Morse" in the Maritime Radio service, during this special anniversary celebration.

(Click the image above to see and hear our beloved Denice Stoops/DA send the Closing Message at Night of Night XI ... it is a thing of beauty to behold!)

As you can imagine, making "crazy ideas" come to fruition, like moving two World War II transmitters to Bolinas Radio takes more than just an "idea." It also takes planning and physical effort ... AND the financial resources to hire a tractor trailer, or pay for a crane to lift a 100' antenna support pole back into the air, or to commission a professional rigger to climb the pole and suspend heavy copper wires back into place so that the "music of Morse" can emanate from them once again. "Night of Nights" is an all-hands-on-deck event for the MRHS, but we could not keep this sacred tradition alive without the assistance of True Believers like you.

Would you like to help? If so you can use the link below to donate through PayPal, or send your gift to:

MRHS

PO BOX 392

Point Reyes Station, CA 94956

The MRHS is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization, so your gifts are tax deductible. Our Tax ID Number is: 20-1122405.

Thank you in advance for your continued support. We are committed to using your gifts responsibly to help preserve our maritime and communications heritage!

True Believer Trivia: What Is It?

Recently, two stalwart members of the Maintenance Department, Bill Ruck/RK and Roy Henrichs/RH were out inspecting the status of the antennas at the former site of ATT High Seas Radio service station KMI (just south of the KPH receive site on Point Reyes). The MRHS also maintains the existing historical fabric at KMI.

The picture above is of a guy wire used to support an antenna structure. See that brown stuff, seemingly woven into the guy wire? Do you know what that is? Do you know how it got there???

The answer is below.

ANNOUNCEMENT: ENIGMA Encrypted Broadcast

You might recall that last year KPH broadcast in Morse Code and Teletype format a message encrypted using the notorious World War II German encryption device known as the ENIGMA machine. The response to that broadcast was so overwhelmingly positive that we are planning on doing this again. Now, here comes the MRHS Cryptography Department Manager, Kevin McGrath/KM with details!

ATTENTION ALL INTERCEPT OPERATORS!

Crypto Transmission from KPH

The MRHS in cooperation with our good friends at the Cipher History Museum will send a coded message in 5-letter groups via the facilities of coast station KPH on Saturday July 22, 2023. The message will be encrypted using the famous Enigma code machine. 

The Enigma was the Germans' most sophisticated coding machine for securely transmitting command and control messages via radio communications in WWII. It was considered so secure that it was used to encipher the most top-secret of messages.

All KPH listeners are invited to try their hand at receiving and decrypting the message. Certificates will be awarded for proof of successful decode, first to decode, and use of original or replica hardware.

You say your Enigma code machine has gotten a bit rusty? No problem, MRHS has you covered! Software simulations exist for the Enigma code machine. Click Here for an easy-to-use Enigma simulator. It is web-based, so no download is necessary. 

For additional information on the Enigma please see Ralph Simpsons' Cipher Museum History site.

Crypto broadcast date, time and formats

The crypto broadcast will commence at 2000Z (1300 Pacific) on 22 July 2023 on all KPH CW and RTTY frequencies (in kc): 426 (IF in service, after an announcement on 500), 6477.5, 8642.0, 12808.5, 17016.8, 22477.5 . Upon completion of the CW transmissions, the broadcast will be repeated on all KPH RTTY frequencies. The RTTY transmission will be 170cps shift Baudot, 45 baud. The frequencies are (in kc): 6324.5, 8427.0 and 12585.5

Further Information 

Full details will be announced in two weeks on the MRHS website and a Special Bulletin to all newsletter subscribers. For more information, or questions about the KPH cipher broadcast send email to: [email protected].

Transmitter Department Report

Transmitter Supervisor Steve Hawes/SH advises that because of the winter storm damage (as reported in recent issues of your MRHS newsletter) a number of KPH transmitters are out of service because of antenna issues. The KPH MF service (500/426 kc) continues to be off the air, although Maintenance Supervisor Bill Ruck/RK reports that a possible temporary fix is being planed that may allow this service to resume by the time of Night of Nights XXIV. The KPH/4 mc service is also out of service. You will recall from the last newsletter that the KPH/22 mc antenna has a shorted or open phasing line, so that service has been a bit degraded, although our colleagues at SS AMERICAN VICTORY/KKUI and an East Coast Monitoring Station report revenue quality signals when the propagation is good.

As a great man sometimes says: "It's always something!"

Q-Code of the Month: QRY

When visitors to KPH learn that many, if not most, of the ships the station contacted were flagged in foreign countries, they often ask how the crack operators at KPH were able to communicate with ship radio officers who perhaps did not speak English. Actually, the radiograms handled by the station from ships were themselves not always in English. The operators copied what was sent, even if they had no idea what the message said. Also, some shipping companies used encoded messages in order to provide secure communications (remember, anyone with a short wave radio and the ability to copy Morse code could listen in to the radiograms being sent), and also as a way to save money (radiograms were charged by the word, and coded messages could communicate information using much fewer "words").

But, the coast station and ship radio operators needed to use certain protocols and procedures in order to carry out their business. Very early in the history of wireless, by international agreement, a large number of standard codes were developed to allow operators to expeditiously handle radiogram traffic, even if they did not speak the same language. These codes were comprised of three letters, all beginning with the letter "Q" (The US military had a similar set of codes that all began with the letter "Z").

Mike Payne/MP, a member of the Operations Department at KPH, suggested that we have a regular feature in the newsletter to present some of these "Q-Codes" as a way of giving our readers a better understanding of how the station functions.

This month we consider the Q-Code "QRY" Like QSS last time, this particular code came in quite handy recently! Enter MP ...

"QRY: What is my turn? // Your turn is Number ___

(Recently) I was working a JA station (An amateur radio station in Japan) on 18 mc when Dean/W8IM (Dean is the chief operator on SS AMERICAN Victory/KKUI. His amateur radio callsign is W8IM) came up and was QRM (QRM = Interfering with) to the JA signal; I asked Dean to QRY 1, which he did and all ended up great. 

Here is the exchange (With a "translation" by your Editor):

K6KPH DE W8IM

(W8IM called K6KPH on Point Reyes, remember MP was already talking to a Japanese station that W8IM was not hearing)

JA... DE K6KPH AS BK

(JA station, please stand by (AS)

W8IM DE K6KPH QRL QRY 1 AS 

(W8IM I am busy (QRL) your "Turn" (Think of taking a number at the Deli) is Number 1, please stand by (AS))

W8IM R 

(Roger ... I acknowledge your message to me)

JA... DE K6KPH

(MP called the Japan use station back)

JA... DE K6KPH NIL HRD BK

(Nothing heard from the Japanese station ... I guess he did not know what QRY means!)

W8IM DE K6KPH K

(W8IM go ahead!)"

You might recall that, like KPH, our amateur radio service (K6KPH) operates on fixed frequencies. Stations wishing to work KPH or K6KPH will just call ... Sometimes they do not know that KPH/K6KPH is already working someone else because they do not hear the other station.

Tune in next time for the next Q-Code in our series!

RMS TITANIC/MGY Hero: Harold Bride

In recent days RMS TITANIC/MGY has been in the headlines once again, 111 years after her foundering on her maiden voyage to New York. And, once again, the recent news has been related to another tragedy at a much smaller scale, but the loss of any life at sea is a tragedy.

We remember one of the great heroes of the loss of RMS Titanic, Marconi Wireless Company operator Harold Bride. Bride and his colleague Jack Phillips, stayed at the key until the power faded. Sadly, Phillips was lost, but Bride was saved (although with serious injuries) and then went back to work on RMS Carpathia to send information and the list of survivors, only to be relieved by Marconi himself when the ship docked in New York.

Recently, an interesting artifact appeared on a radio officer email group. It is Harold Bride's discharge papers from the Merchantile Marine on his return to Southampton on 30 April 1912. Notice that his "Character For Conduct" and "Character For Ability" were both marked as "Very Good."

Indeed ...

Bride went back to sea as a radio officer, where he continued to keep the watch though the years of World War I, eventually settling down in Glasgow with his wife Lucy in 1922. Bride departed this world n 1956.

Poet's Corner: The Radio Officer's Lament

We recently came across this bit of rhyme, lamenting the passing of the age of the true Radio Officer. Today, merchant ships are staffed by Electronics Officers, who maintain the electronic equipment, for communications or not, on a ship.

THE R/O’s LAMENT

In a cold and lonely radio shack, where the last receiver stands,

 A museum set of manuals held idly in my hands,

 With my jargon half forgotten, of my stock-in-trade bereft,

 I wonder what's ahead of me - the only RO left.

 With the office sprouting gadgets like a nightmare Christmas tree.

 There are keyboards for computers, where my Morse key used to be.

 And I couldn't read steam morse 'midst this lunatic array,

 For at every height and angle there's a visual display.

 The proud, efficient Sparkie has been rendered obsolete

 By electronic equipment fitted in the Merchant Fleet,

 And tho' a signal's through the system in the blinking of an eye,

 No-one's got the time, to even make a cup of kye.

 To delete the human error, to erase a noble breed,

 We rely upon a microchip, we put our faith in speed.

 We press a key, and make a switch, and spin a little disc,

 it's one ton per cent efficient - and never mind the risk.

 But again I may be needed, for the time will surely come

 When there's a fault within the system and the modern stuff is dumb,

 When the satellites are useless but morse is there for free -

 T’was good enough for old Marconi, and it's good enough for me.

The Maritime Radio Historical Society is dedicated to keeping this former R/O's dream alive ...

True Believer Trivia: What Is It? ANSWER!

What is that brown stuff? CATTLE HAIR!

Why is it there? While the air above the ground level of the antenna field at Point Reyes and Bolinas is the domain of antennas and radio waves, the ground level is the domain of the cattle that give Point Reyes National Seashore its particular historical and cultural flavor. For generations cattle have roamed the ranches of Point Reyes, including at the "radio ranches." Like any of us these cattle enjoy a good back scratch, and the cattle of the "radio ranches" have discovered that antenna guy wires make EXCELLENT back scratchers!

Now you know the rest of the story ....

Your MRHS "Out Standing in the Field":

The Poldhu Station

In the Summer of 2022, the MRHS made a pilgrimage to the sacred sites associated with Marconi and his earliest endeavors in England. While Marconi was born and raised in Italy, as a young man he traveled to England with his Irish-English mother, Annie Jameson Marconi, in order to develop his experiments into a business. His mothers relations, wealthy scions of the Jameson Whisky empire, bankrolled these early efforts to monetize Marconi's wireless enterprises.

Last time we visited The Lizard Station, at the southernmost point in England, where Marconi built a station to explore the commercial viability of communicating with ships at sea. At about the same time he also built a station about 10 miles north of Lizard on the west coast of the Lizard peninsula -- a location that had a direct "view" towards the New World. From this location at Poldhu the first wireless transmission across the Atlantic was sent on 12 December 1912. On Signal Hill, near St. John's, Newfoundland, Marconi and his faithful assistant George Kemp copied the Morse character "S" being sent from Poldhu.

In the picture above one can see (in the foreground) the Marconi Centre, a museum and interpretive center staffed by the Poldhu Amateur Radio Club, and (in the background) the former Poldhu Hotel, where Marconi stayed when he was at the station. The antennas you see are modern structures supporting the amateur radio club. Inside the museum are interesting displays concerning the history of wireless, and the history of Marconi at Poldhu.

In the fields near the Marconi Centre one finds the remains of Marconi's station, including the foundation of the transmitter building, and a number of artifacts abandoned in place.

Here is the foundation of the transmitter building. Very little remains, although one can get a sense of the arrangement of the building. In a number of places there are rusted metal supports still embedded in the concrete.

One of the interesting features remaining, which is very typical of buildings constructed by Marconi, are these decorative tiles (above) in the floor of he transmitter building. Even in an industrial, experimental building, Marconi found a need for the aesthetic. Similar tiles can also still be found on the pavement leading to what must have been the main entrance to the building.

In this satellite view of the site you can see the foundations of the transmitter building and a trench leading from the building to the center of the circular indentation you can see in the upper left corner. This trench was used to bring the transmission lines to a steerable antenna that once existed where the circle can be seen today. These features are from experiments conducted by Marconi in the 1920s as part of his efforts to build what was called the "Beam Wireless Service," which was conducted using the shortwave spectrum, as part of the broader Imperial Wireless Chain -- a point-to-point service linking Great Britain with the far colonies and dominions of the British Empire, using both longwave and shortwave links.

Here is a close-up view of the trench, as it exists today. In reality, it is deeper than it looks in the photograph!

One also finds massive concrete structures that served as anchors for the guy wires used to support antenna structures. What is interesting here is that similar concrete structures can be found today at Bolinas Radio and the former Marshall receive site, both also built by Marconi before World War One.

Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean is this memorial to Marconi, erected by the Marconi Company in 1937 when the station was demolished and the land donated to the National Trust. This is a fitting monument, and a fitting place, to honor Marconi and his colleagues who proved definitively at this place what most physicists said was impossible -- to send radio waves over the horizon and for very long distances. Without that first "S" spanning the vast watery void modern communications by wireless would not exist. Next time you pick up your mobile phone think of Marconi, and Poldhu, and the faint sounds of the letter "S" in Morse ... ... ... ... ...

Next time, we will visit the well-hidden gem that is the Museum of Global Communications, not too far from Poldhu.

The Crazy Idea Continues

"It's not a crazy idea ..."

As these closing lines of this issue of your MRHS newsletter are being written your humble servant is experiencing the prescient wisdom of those words. On the other desk is a radio receiver tuned to 22477.5 kc, and the "music of Morse" is emanating from the speaker ... receiving the Free Press broadcast from KPH -- "The Wireless Giant of the Pacific."

It all began with a dream. Marconi's dream was comprised of part science, part desire for fame and fortune. A crazy idea. Sending radio waves well beyond the horizon ... Maybe to the other side of the globe ... But the dream that became a crazy idea was brought to reality, beginning at Poldhu on the English coast, and completed a millisecond or two later in Newfoundland. Dreams lead to crazy ideas ... which sometimes become a reality greater than the dream itself.

Tom Horsfall and Richard Dillman had a dream on the way home from attending the "wake" that was the closing of the Maritime Morse service in the United States at Half Moon Bay on 12 July 1999. And that dream led to a crazy idea ... Which became a reality beyond even their dream in the years to come. Twenty-four years later that dream, that crazy idea, continues to be a reality ... One anyone with a shortwave receiver and a bit of wire for an antenna can experience themselves virtually every Saturday in the year, but especially at that magical moment every year at 0001 GMT on July 13 when the dream, the crazy idea, begins another trip around the sun, who makes all this possible by his sunspots and energy.

We hope that Marconi's crazy idea, Tom's crazy idea, is also YOUR crazy idea. Thank you for all you do to keep the crazy idea alive. We appreciate your encouragement and support in so many ways. Thank you for making Tom's crazy idea YOUR idea, too. If not for your support the crazy idea would truly be just a crazy idea. Night of Nights XXIV is our way of saying "Thank You" to you!