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The First Forty Years
By Roger Cooke G3LDI
I first became interested in amateur radio when I was 12 years old,
building the usual crystal sets, valve radios and so on. I spent several
years as a Short Wave Listener, something that seems rare these days,
using an old R1155. With the help of Elmers, Bill Brennan G3CQE and Pat
Gowen, G3IOR, I was licensed in 1956. I then trod the path of looking
for new countries, working DX on CW for several years.
In 1958 Bill G3CQE and myself used to talk to James Hepburn, VE7KX, on
CW. He asked us to listen for his RTTY, which we duly did. This sounded
fascinating, but obviously we could not decode it. He told us what it
was, and said he would send some information to get us interested. A few
months later, in 1959, we received a call from Arthur "Doc"
Gee, G2UK. He said he had located a source of some old teleprinter gear
and thought we might be keen. We visited Doc, and sure enough, he had
some teleprinters. They were the old Creed 3X, a tape machine. We each
took one home and Bill was the first to get it working. To be frank, I
was not that keen, although we did have a few local contacts.
Bill got himself set up on the HF bands and had lots of contacts with
Jim, VE7KX. There were very few RTTY signals around in those days, and
we were not welcome on the HF bands to be honest! We had a few that would
come on and tell us in no uncertain terms to "Get those b….y
jingle-bells off the band". However, we persevered, just as we had
done with SSB, and used a slot between the CW and phone bands, so as not
to upset one or the other, but a bit of both! This is why the present
RTTY slot is where it is.
 After
a while, Bill heard a rumour that some more printers were available,this
time the Creed 7B, a page-printer. We took a trip to the junkyard and
in short, ended up with a page-printer. I was hooked, and finally got
on the air seriously with the 7B. These became available from "known"
junkyards for about £12. They were usually in a wooden packing crate,
and then sealed up in very thick brown, greasy paper. They were in very
good condition as a rule.
Gear was not common in those days. BARTG was formed and the newsletter
was a few sheets of A4 to start with, mostly information on how to FSK
your rig, where to obtain a machine or a TU. There were no terminal units
available, unless you were lucky enough to obtain a rack-mounted ex-commercial
unit, which most of us did. Our Bible was the green RTTY Handbook from
the USA. I passed mine on some years ago, but have regretted in ever since!
Later on the ST-5 became the standard.
Arthur, G2FUD, used to run a service whereby you could lodge several stamped
addressed envelopes with him and he would send out news of equipment availability
as soon as it was known. It was known as the News Flash. The grape-vine
was very efficient and most interested amateurs ended up with a machine.
This news also extended to what new countries were on the air. It was
very rare to hear anything except the USA in those days. Gradually the
word spread and more came on. BARTG issued an award for working 25 countries,
quite an achievement then! Contests were introduced and popularity increased.
RTTY remained the only data mode for some years, and I well remember the
preparation for a contest. Once I stripped the 7B completely and re-assembled
it. It took ages, but it was a lot quieter and worked very well when I
had finished. I was lucky enough to have a silence cover, but imagine
running a contest for hours with the noise from the machinery! We had
to have a teleprinter, an auto sender, a reperforator and possibly a perforator
too. Paper tapes had to be prepared prior to the contest, and preferably
some earplugs made available!
The RTTY journal, from the USA, made us UK stations green with envy looking
at pictures of the model 28ASR that the USA stations had. I never did
get one of those but did end my machinery days with a 19 set. I was sorry
in some ways that machinery was replaced with electronics, but it's a
much quieter life now! I still look at a teleprinter and marvel at the
design.
In the 70's Peter Martinez, G3PLX designed a solid state RTTY unit, around
a portable TV set. I built one of these and had that running for some
time. It was a huge piece of equipment just for RTTY however! It was the
start of Data comms as we know it now. Following on from that Peter then
introduced Amtor. This was the first hand-shaking type of data communications
and was relatively error-free. This was a very popular mode and was the
forerunner to packet. Packet radio was first noticed around 1980, when
some amateurs from Cambridge University began using the BBC B computer
to exchange data. This was at about the same time as the Vancouver protocol
was introduced and the name Packet Radio was written about in QST.
Four amateurs in Norwich sent for the TBC-1 board and built those in 1983.
We had packet radio going on two meters by the summer and then migrated
to HF. We were using Xerox 820 CPM computers with 8-inch hard drives with
all of 250k per side! I ran a BBS on HF using just this, communicating
and eventually forwarding with Jack Colson, W3TMZ. Nodes were beginning
to appear, and I used to forward mail with GB7SPV in London by digipeating
via a node in Cambridge. I don't think that would work now! Gradually
more and more were getting active on packet, with BBS and Nodes springing
up all over the UK, and the word spread worldwide.
Equipment was essentially amateur built to start with, but commercial
equipment soon became available, and most people use commercial units
now. Forwarding now takes place worldwide, and higher speeds are gradually
being introduced. Forwarding of international mail can now be done via
satellite gateways and HF gateways. The Satellite Gateways use UO-22,
a very successful Satellite that has given very good service for a number
of years now. The system is completely automatic and can be almost as
fast as the Internet. There are two gateways in the UK, GB7LDI in Norwich
and GB7SAT in Dorset. Mail for most major countries can be sent via this
route and we wish more would take advantage of the system to justify its
existence. I still run an HF gateway although it is not used as much as
it used to be or even ought to be. I say that because there has been a
migration to the Internet just lately, which is a shame. The Internet
is a useful tool, and I use the system myself, but as well as,
not instead of amateur radio.
Other error-free protocols have been introduced, and on HF, Pactor II
is gradually taking over from Packet as a more robust mode. For keyboard
to keyboard, PSK31 is becoming very popular. This is another innovation
of Peter Martinez. There is also G-Tor, Clover, MMTTY, MFSK16, HELL all
looking for part of our limited spectrum.
The next forty years will be very interesting. With the advent of the
ISS and also P3D, if it does eventually work, satellite and space communication
will become the norm for the next generation of amateurs. I don't see
myself still being active in forty years time - Oh ok then, if perhaps
the BARTG contest is still running, I might be there!
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