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World wide Shore Radio stations

15K views 85 replies 33 participants last post by  Bob Murdoch 
#1 ·
In the 60'70's before Sparks where redundant, as an oily rag what where the world wide radio stations for british ships? I just remember Portasaid, Mauritus, and Hong Kong. I am not sure what covered the Pacific and the America's North and South. or Australiasia. Or where the radios in those days powerful enough to transmit to the UK any time of the day or night? I am contemplating my navel and finger in orifice! Am I barking mad?
 
#9 ·
Numerous H/F Stns

Hello Dave
I missed the area scheme narrowly by the time i started out.
If ionospheric conditions were favourable you could skip back direct to Portishead UK with a reasonable powered transmitter from alot of places worldwide - if you were prepared to try at awkward times !
Out in mid pacific the US west coast stations of KPH & KFS (San Francisco) were always listening, as were the Japanese stations of Choshi & I think Nagasaki. VPS Hong Kong was always reliable as was 9VG Singapore.
The Aussie stations of VIS & VIP have been mentioned which were good.
Down off South America Argentina / Brazil / Chile I found PCH/Holland to be excellent. Capetown/ZSC was a handy back up on the way down the South Atlantic if needed.
Basically there was heaps of stations to go at worldwide and you were pretty much covered.
I was inspired though by the generation before me who bashed-out world wide back home to Portishead with "Oceanspans & Atalantas" Well done Sirs !
 
#15 ·
Useful link, thanks for posting ....

I must say that at this range of time I can't remember where I received and sent to out there, but with an O'span 6 & Mercury/Electra set up I don't suppose I got much of a look-in at GKB !

We had a great party for Halloween 1971 up at Vacaos, and followed up with another magic one on board a day or so later. I do remember they were really please to see us as the Phoenix brewery had almost run out of the makings, and the NAAFI had run out of 'cotton piece goods' for the Wrens and nurses, quite apart from having all the Xmas goodies on board as well !
 
#18 ·
I was on Clan Macleod, in Port Louis for a week or 10 days discharging general cargo on the way to Ceylon & India about the end of October 71
 
#20 ·
Agree about the thanks to the RN staff, very helpful and friendly lot. I mostly tried to clear direct to GKB but I must admit when in the Caribbean on an old banana boat with noisy DC fans in passenger cabins I called Portishead but listened to Halifax, who never failed to offer to QSP, and always with a cheery remark.
 
#24 ·
HF area scheme etc...

Hi,

I never had the ‘pleasure’ of sailing with Globespan or anything so exotic – a ‘Span 7 was the best I ever had. I always envied the Scandinavians and others who had high power transmitters which would have made the job that much easier. Realistically the only difference between 100 watts and 800 watts is 9 dB – but when your signal is down in the noise it can make all the difference…Whenever I joined a ship I’d head for the Radio Room to see what gear I had but the Globespan eluded me…

Interesting how pretty mediocre equipment can prove quite adequate though – I sailed on a coaster and we used to go right up the Gulf of Bothnia. Nothing as exotic as h/f – just an old Reliance and an old CR100 but always managed to work Stonehaven on m/f without any problems.

Talking of poor areas to work back into the UK from. I worked with Elders & Fyffes for a while and once we got into the Caribbean I used to find it was a bit like falling into a dark hole – working back into the UK was never easy (think our puny 100 watts somehow got lost in the Bermuda triangle!).

It’s a long time ago and the mind has dulled a bit (well a lot) but can any Elders R/O’s remember orders regarding clearing traffic intended for the US? Elders were owned (or somehow connected) with the United Fruit Company of Boston and we were told to clear all our US traffic via certain Coast Stations – would that have been Tropical Radio’s WAX and WNU? My recollections are calling them for ‘ages’ with no reply and eventually getting quite shirty and asking the Old Man to enquire via our agents if they ever listened to the calling frequencies!!! The reply was that apparently Tropical Radio (or whatever the company was) had radio installations on other ships and ‘they’ all – conveniently - had the same calling frequency – so that’s where they listened when they were doing the crossword – with an occasional quick listen up and down the band. I seem to remember the old man was in the habit of handing in traffic intended for UniFruitco just as I was ready to ‘hit the switch’ and go off watch – last watch of the day of course!!!

Happy memories with Elders. Nice round trips from Avonmouth /Jamaica – calling at Kingston, Oracabessa, Montego Bay and a couple of other places. We also did a couple of trips Honduras/Guatemala – New Orleans. The appropriate publication listed coast stations in both Honduras and Guatemala – we never heard any!!!

Oh my floating home at the time was the Matina…

Happy days…and apologies as I appear to have strayed off topic…

John
 
#29 ·
Hi,

Talking of poor areas to work back into the UK from. I worked with Elders & Fyffes for a while and once we got into the Caribbean I used to find it was a bit like falling into a dark hole – working back into the UK was never easy (think our puny 100 watts somehow got lost in the Bermuda triangle!).

It’s a long time ago and the mind has dulled a bit (well a lot) but can any Elders R/O’s remember orders regarding clearing traffic intended for the US? Elders were owned (or somehow connected) with the United Fruit Company of Boston and we were told to clear all our US traffic via certain Coast Stations – would that have been Tropical Radio’s WAX and WNU?
John,

Did 7 trips on the 'Golfito in 1960/61 and we prided ourselves that we were never unable to contact Portishead direct with our Oceanspan and CR300 combination. Bridgetown, Barbados/VPO was fine on HF too, no problem clearing ETAs and stores requests there. Trinidad's (VPL) HF watches were something else though; they were short and moved across the bands (8MHz, 12MHz) and although his transmitted callsign tape was usually readable, your calls got no response. Kingston/VQI was almost as bad.

You were right about Tropical Radio and WAX & WNU but we had only occasional traffic for them. Most of the traffic for the USA was from passengers and it was dead simple to raise WCC or WSL from the Caribbean on HF.

Problems began when in the area on other ships than E&F - the Venzuelans were keen to get traffic to you, but the devil of a job to raise if you wanted to call them with traffic. Ditto with stations in Central American countries and down the South American coast towards Brazil. Could be hard work at times.
 
#28 ·
David,

Glad to hear I wasn't the only one who got these 'citations'...

I got one from a monitoring station in Canada - can't remember the actual name - something like Canandaguia.

We carried a Junior R/O on the Matina so to help pass the time used to keep 16 hours watches once he'd got his feet wet. The Junior would call Portishead giving his call - but not ours - and wait for the 'de' - that way he felt he'd not shown his hand if there was no reply. Unfortunately the little man at Canandaguia latched on to what was happening and promptly sent us a 'it is with deep regret we have to inform you' letter !!! Well it was obviously sent to Marconi who sent it on to me and as Chief I carried the can!!!

I vaguely seem to remember we got the second one for calling on 500 during the SP... Think I replied to that one to the effect that we'd had problems with the Radio Room clock - rather a lame excuse really...

John
 
#30 ·
Comments relating to a few of the foregoing posts:
Caribbean 'black hole': Yes, I live in it. A friend in the UK, not 100 miles from GKA, with whom I have a Sunday sked on ham frequencies, complains bitterly that I will ruin his hearing as my signal is perpetually in the mud. Sunspots, and ERP seem to make little difference; it is, like the magnetic anomaly in the South Atlantic, just the way it is!
The Eastern Pacific is a really bad area for QSOs into Europe, however there doesn't seem to be much difficulty in the opposite direction - Asia. My conclusion is that this is due to the Rocky Mountains.
Although long-path to VIS from the Atlantic, did seem to work.
My memories of the Area Scheme (Appendix 9, published separately from the PMG Handbook, as I recall) are limited to on one occasion Mauritius telling me to contact GKL (as it was then) directly as my QTC was too long!
Having escaped from the confines the UK flag and getting decent levels of transmitter power, and receivers that stayed on frequency, I quite enjoyed the direct contacts with the world's HF stations and all of their idiosyncracies.
(One example: Choshi/JCS would accept 1030N 11845E as three words, Nagasaki/JOS would make it four: I could go on, but it would be way off-topic).
The worst HF stations, to me, were Chalna (or was it actually at Khulna, I forget), and Chittagong. The problem was that if, failing to raise either of them, one used Karachi (this was before East Pakistan became Bangladesh), the QTC used to travel by camel to it's destination so that the ship would actually arrive before the ETA advice!
 
#32 ·
Sunspots, and ERP seem to make little difference; it is, like the magnetic anomaly in the South Atlantic, just the way it is!
That it is consistent in spite of ionospheric variations suggests that there is a site/antenna problem rather than a propagation difficulty. Or maybe it is a matter of 'Never on Sunday.'[=P]
 
#31 ·
I don't recall any particular problem from the Caribbean - US Gulf, Windward Islands, Trinidad, Cuba, Panama - no problems contacting UK and Europe.

Wasn't there an Area Scheme Receiving Station at Trinidad and another at Bermuda - am I imagining that?

From the eastern Pacific you just had to pick your time (unfortunately it didn't always coincide with watch periods). Radio waves go north and south as well as east and west.

I had a fair bit of trouble from all sorts of places until I decided to apply the radio propogation knowledge I'd learned at college - it actually worked!

John T.
 
#33 ·
John,

Sorry, you have had to much sun and larger!! There were never any sup or other area stations in the Carib when I was involved with it. Possibly long before my time but no recollection. Think most of the Carib was Cable and Wireless.


Neville - Hawkey01
 
#35 · (Edited)
John

I did exactly the same as your Junior !! Obviously Canadaigua (?) was wise to this and waited patiently !! The outcome for me was a letter from the GPO slapping my fingers with 'Although you consider your action was justified, it was nevertheless an infringement of the Radio Regulations and we must ask you to observe strict compliance in the future'

Another 'weird' thing I came across was listening to WCC for loading orders. I realised that the strange echo effect I could hear on 8Mcs from the Indian Ocean, was both east and west radiation. QSP'ing thru KPH was not much better. Did you try east to KPH or West to WCC ??

David
+
 
#36 ·
The echo effect sometimes heard on HF was known as seventh second echo. Often heard when within direct ground wave distance of an HF station and simultaneously receiving the sky wave which had gone right around the earth in multiple hops. This took a seventh of a second.
 
#38 ·
... or was it the time lag between the sky wave signals that had travelled in opposite directions around the world arriving at the receiving point with a seventh of a second difference?

(Thumb)
I have no idea. (Whaaa)
I only know it was bloody annoying and even the narrowest of filters wouldn't remove it. (Sad)
What with that and the QRM on 500 in the same areas, a sparkie's lot was not a happy one.

Kris
 
#39 ·
Moulder is right. Only way to avoid it on a ship, with a normal single-diversity set-up is by choosing a different HF frequency band. OK with WCC or WSL and the like, since they kept simultaneous watch on more than one band, not possible with the likes of Khulna or North Post.
 
#42 ·
I used to work at Kranji Wireless in Singapore in the 60's, did any of you guys ever work us during that time?
I only knew of Kranji as the BBC's relay station for the Overseas Service (now, the World Service) tranmissions. I also used to work VPS on occasion but never knew where it was. Was that also Kranji?
 
#41 ·
BP standard long range station for the western hemisphere was Portishead GKA but this switched to Sydney VIS once vessel moved into the eastern hemisphere (can't remember the longitude at which this was supposed to happen). It was still necessary to copy the GKA list though as some head office types didn't bother to check and always sent traffic to GKA. VIS seemed to have a hearing problem however but Perth VIP were more than happy to step in and take the business :)
 
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