marine operator on HF

[alok]

What happen to her,in most cases they were female and heard in the HF marine band around 8Mhz.

Did they move to satellite ? Are they still around in some form on HF for emergency use ?

Last time I think I heard them on HF was maybe 15-20 years ago ?



Al

 

[ka3jjz]

As I understand it, there are a few still out there, but yes, a great deal of the traffic moved to satellites - much more secure.

Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

Here's a site that lists their specific freqs and weather broadcasts, too. Interesting listening once we get closer to Winter...

HF SSB Radiotelephone, Telex and Email Frequencies and Channels

Mike

 

[majoco]

IMHO it wasn't a problem with security. As an ex ship's Radio Officer, the main problem with trying to make phone calls on HF was propagation, especially on the North Atlantic where rapid fades and lightning crashes made good quality nearly impossible. We strived to get a good duplex link even across bands but often simplex was all that was useable. Then you had to explain to the punter that you had to say "over" etc - often this was too hard for them to understand! You had to book your call with the shore operator and hazard a guess what conditions were going to be like, even getting people out of their cabins in the wee small hours when conditions were good! When VHF came common in the 60's it was wonderful - with 100watts up on the highest mast you could work all the way up the coast to Newfoundland and only two days later started getting into Northern Ireland at Cork.

From a security point of view, we warned the user's that anyone could listen in, although on good links we had a rudimentary speech inverter. I left before the satellite's went up, now they don't even have Radio Officers, only an Electronics Officer - poor sod!

 

[KB7MIB]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; U; en-US) Gecko/20081217 Vision-Browser/8.1 301x200 LG VN530)

Way back in the second half of the 80's, I recorded a clip on my VCR from CNN (I think it was) of a marine operator who went by the handle of "Sand Dollar". I probably still have that tape around here somewhere...

 

[brandon]

There are still some English radiotelephone calls via WLO Mobile. I heard one last week on 13110 USB.
If you understand Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. they still can be heard daily. Lots of them in the 13100 to 13200 range.

a few off the top of my head
13107 and 13182 Chinese (Guangzhou Radio)
13125 and 13131 Russians (Pacific region)

The days of the AT&T High Seas Operator are long gone.

 

[Boombox]

In the 1980's and up through the 90's I was able to hear a lot of phone patches from fishermen in the North Pacific. I usually could hear them nightly. Lately I hear very little on the HF marine frequencies except data signals, and a few illegal operators. I'll have to try for those 13 Mhz freq's; thanks for the info Brandon.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

I am guessing HF phone patches, with unpredictable propagation, could not compete with Sat phone services like Iridium, GlobalStar, or Msat. The latter also has a PTT service. A friend of mine has the full set-up in his work truck, the osld school looking handset as well as the PTT handset.

 

[AlaskaMike]

I have great copy right now on what sounds like Russian language radiotelephone on 13131.0 (0610z). At one point I heard a long string of pulse dialing sounds, and then later during the connected call it sounded like an operator came on. I don't speak Russian, but I could imagine the operator saying something like, "This is the High Seas operator in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Please deposit another two thousand rubles to continue your call. <beeboop> Thank you for using &#1044;&#1035;&&#1035;."