From one former Sparky to another...great nostalgic video mate. Spent 20 years at sea 14 of which were on ships. 13 yrs on ships with WT as standby as well as main equipment. Yes...born a bit too late but enjoyed every bit of it.
Friend of mine, RIP, was radio officer for Scripps institute, WWD, and served on several of their ships. I have NEVER learned to copy in my head. About 22wpm was my limit some years ago
I never got to the point where I was fluent either. Had to do the mechanical write it down and read after it was over! But it's great we are able to speak a language which is waning ....can't bring myself to say dying CWwill never die!!!! :) Sorry to here about your friend it was a great life, that I only got a sniff of but happy I did it! Glad you enjoyed the vid! 73 TUSU VA
Dr Crippen yes .... en-suite toilet.... portholes ... and close to hell deck! Been in much worse shacks.... Bounty had no natural light, cramped and was next door to lunatic Toolpushers office.... “hey sparks your a cabbage... and your mates a f$&)@!!” (Insert Irish accent).
This is too slow for me and i am 83 yrs old. I was a RN operator but spent 3 years at Ceylon West Radio GZP4 operating merchant shipping mainly. back in 1954-5-6
I hate GMDSS systems. In past time Ships incident very real as Radio Officer handling systematic work. Most of the companies hair Radio Officer cum purser jobs. Radio officer handles all the jobs perfectly and brilliantly
Sorry the course (and job position) no longer exists! If you want to go to sea you need to look for a Cadetship with a shipping company to be a deckhand or engineer or navigation officer! Good luck!!!
No unfortunately I was at the tail end of the era...never got that fluent! Missed out on the best times....never got to sail on vodka powered ships!!! Older RO's used to tell me about guys who could draw out weather charts at high speed on the fly and send and receive as fast as humanly possible to type! This morse is ironically computer generated.....the thing that replaced me in the end ....73. Did get visited by Russian naval cadets in 1988 in Tasmania at the Australian Maritime College....BOY CAN they DRINK!!!
Russian were the best in the 90s I think, ,at that time western fleets were already on TLX or inmarsat and their telegraphy was slow, while russians were still on A1. I remember russian ships were callsing coast and announced QTC30 and there was QRY 10-20 ships and she was sending at 40WPM , 90% of traffic were private telegrams, which were incredibly cheaps for their mariners unlike on the west, where coast stations were fully capitalistic and QSJ was high. So u can image how good they were. Their radioofficers worked very hard to send all that traffic.
@@zawir_usaodpowiadausa3354 Yeah my WT ship had ARQ telex so I only took wx and Nav warnings in morse....was the best job on the ship! sad it is over...
Yes, so many of us ended up in quite different professions!
Yes we did! Independent resilient souls, us old sparks…. We were after all the “one man band” on the boat (most often)!
@@TheArtofEngineering Yes self-contained resilience is a useful trait to have learnt.
Hi George, you have had a very interesting life!
Yes it had been a less than linear career path. I really liked your ATV content, we live in exciting tech times...73 and TU FER the comment.
Great clip bringing back wonderful times to life Thanks
From one former Sparky to another...great nostalgic video mate. Spent 20 years at sea 14 of which were on ships. 13 yrs on ships with WT as standby as well as main equipment. Yes...born a bit too late but enjoyed every bit of it.
Yes twas the best job on the ship.....one that nobody else could do! Proud to have done it! Thanks for the comment.
How I hate GMDSS, this technology has killed my youth dreams. TNX for share your good times as an RO! 51/77
Friend of mine, RIP, was radio officer for Scripps institute, WWD, and served on several of their ships. I have NEVER learned to copy in my head. About 22wpm was my limit some years ago
I never got to the point where I was fluent either. Had to do the mechanical write it down and read after it was over!
But it's great we are able to speak a language which is waning ....can't bring myself to say dying CWwill never die!!!!
:)
Sorry to here about your friend it was a great life, that I only got a sniff of but happy I did it!
Glad you enjoyed the vid!
73 TUSU VA
I used to like to operate at about 25 wpm, but could go faster and read much faster.
Funnily enough, sometimes faster Morse was easier to read than slow, it flowed as a stream more like spoken words.
Published 6 years ago. That life would have been a good fit for me.
I was born far to late.
Was RO myself on the Byford Dolphin - just did a couple of relief trips on there in the North Sea. Nice Radio Room though.
Dr Crippen yes .... en-suite toilet.... portholes ... and close to hell deck! Been in much worse shacks.... Bounty had no natural light, cramped and was next door to lunatic Toolpushers office.... “hey sparks your a cabbage... and your mates a f$&)@!!” (Insert Irish accent).
This is too slow for me and i am 83 yrs old. I was a RN operator but spent 3 years at Ceylon West Radio GZP4 operating merchant shipping mainly. back in 1954-5-6
Do you remember some more datails? im interesting about this.
Very cool video. Thanks!
Good job, great descriptive video, i agree with life. Nice.
I hate GMDSS systems. In past time Ships incident very real as Radio Officer handling systematic work. Most of the companies hair Radio Officer cum purser jobs. Radio officer handles all the jobs perfectly and brilliantly
What is the qualifications n age for ds course
Sorry the course (and job position) no longer exists! If you want to go to sea you need to look for a Cadetship with a shipping company to be a deckhand or engineer or navigation officer! Good luck!!!
R
Awful morse. Typical for capitalistic ships :))) Did u ever heard soviet ships on 35 WPM hand traffic ? or 60 WPM hand sent rag chewing ?
No unfortunately I was at the tail end of the era...never got that fluent! Missed out on the best times....never got to sail on vodka powered ships!!! Older RO's used to tell me about guys who could draw out weather charts at high speed on the fly and send and receive as fast as humanly possible to type! This morse is ironically computer generated.....the thing that replaced me in the end ....73. Did get visited by Russian naval cadets in 1988 in Tasmania at the Australian Maritime College....BOY CAN they DRINK!!!
Russian were the best in the 90s I think, ,at that time western fleets were already on TLX or inmarsat and their telegraphy was slow, while russians were still on A1. I remember russian ships were callsing coast and announced QTC30 and there was QRY 10-20 ships and she was sending at 40WPM , 90% of traffic were private telegrams, which were incredibly cheaps for their mariners unlike on the west, where coast stations were fully capitalistic and QSJ was high. So u can image how good they were. Their radioofficers worked very hard to send all that traffic.
@@zawir_usaodpowiadausa3354 Yeah my WT ship had ARQ telex so I only took wx and Nav warnings in morse....was the best job on the ship! sad it is over...
Yeah, I did. And they were good! I could've kept up with them but I didn't know the Cyrillic characters! 73 DE KFS