Radio and Travel Inspired Ramblings

1969, White Bear Lake, Minnesota  -  I had just gotten my General class ham license and was 16 yrs old, and a CW fanatic.  I was using an old home-made tube-type keyer that some older ham gave me with a pair of straight keys bolted back to back for a squeeze paddle to send Morse code.  I had a Johnson Ranger 2 transmitter and Hammarlund HQ-110AC receiver and a 40m dipole antenna in the back yard of my parents home.  Late at night when the ham band got empty I would tune around below 40m and discovered the Russian ship-to-shore traffic nets using Morse code.  The net control shore station was usually sending 30 wpm or faster and it was fun to listen to  the ships check in.  I figured out that it was Russians from the ITU assignments of the callsigns.  When there were no hams on 40m to work, I wanted to see if the Russians could work me, DX on 40m !  So I would listen to the QTC tape and then break them and check in with the call of one of the ships they had traffic for.  Sure enough, they always heard me in Minnesota and sent me down freq to get the traffic.  But it was almost always below the range of the Ranger VFO, I couldn't meet the op and after a few minutes of calling me the net control would call again on the main freq.  I'd answer, he'd speed up a bit and be annoyed and send me down freq again, and by the third time they would finally ignore my signal, recognizing my fist.  But at least I knew I could work DX on 40m !  I did this off and on for a couple of years.

I graduated from high school, went to college for a year, and in 1971 enlisted in the Navy in the Advanced Electronics Program.  I was selected for a security clearance and became a CTM3 (Cryptologic Tech, Maintenance) and finished Electronics Technician school on Treasure Island, then schools for KW-7 Crypto at Mare Island, CA and Model 28 Teletype machines in Norfolk.  After 2 years of duty at the Naval Security Group HFDF site at Rota Spain (see blogs about Sahara Desert and Indian Ocean) I ended up at the Navy HFDF site at RAF Edzell in NE Scotland.  The building we worked in was inside the huge Wullenweber antenna array.  There were about 14 Navy HFDF sites around the world linked by real-time encrypted Teletype circuits (this was in the 60's and 70's !!).

 1976 - I was on CW on the ham bands a lot from Scotland in my off duty time and could copy 45 plus wpm.  My call there was GM5BKC.  At work (a CTM2 in the Navy) I repaired teletype equipment and we worked in some areas of the receiver building where the ops copied all teletype signals (a system called TEBO), 

 

and other areas where the CTR ops (the ones taught to copy Morse Code) monitored the Russian ship-to-shore CW nets.  When a ship checked into the net, they would copy the callsign and get a DF cut on the signal, which would then lock in all the other HFDF sites around the world to the same frequency to all get a DF cut on the signal, if it could be heard.  

 
  One night on a mid-watch a Mod 28 printer broke at the HFDF CW posit and I replaced the 'typing unit' with a spare from the Teletype Maintenance shop.  

I asked the CTR op working the posit when there would be some traffic on the teletype circuit so I could be sure the teletype printer was working, and he said we just had to wait until one of the other HFDF sites heard a new CW signal and the spot came over our secure TTY net.  So I stood around for a while, listening to the CW net he was monitoring on a big speaker hanging from the top of the equipment rack.  The Russian shore station net control was being a real jerk, not slowing below 30 wpm, no matter how slow or ragged the shipboard operators were sending.  One poor guy on a ship, probably bouncing around in the North Atlantic, could barely send anything you could copy and the net control rudely chewed him out on the air (on CW, of course)!  I turned to the CTR and said "man, that net control sure is being an asshole".  Wow, our op turned to me and half way fell out of his chair, he was so shocked that a Matman (what they called us CTM Maintenance techs) could copy CW.  "You can copy that in your head?  He's doing 40's ?! (Navy term for going 40 wpm).  You've been copying the whole thing?".  I just told him sure, I'm a ham and I only use CW, 40 wpm isn't really that fast...

  Well, once I had listened to the HFDF ops for a while I realized what they had been doing every day and night on the radio for the last 15 or 20 years.  They obviously knew where I was located every single time I hit the key and sent one of those callsigns on the Russian net when I was in high school, and I hope they got a laugh from my messing with the Russians :-)   I was surprised that the FBI never showed up at our door in Minnesota, asking why I was using a Russian callsign, but of course to ask that question would give away that someone knew, and our HFDF capabilities were Classified for many decades.

Glenn AE0Q (ex WA0VPK, GM5BKC, ZB2WZ)
ex-CTM2 USN

More about Cold War spy ships (photo)