Jean Shepherd - Morse Code & Talking to Murmansk 1965/04/13

Jean tells us stories of his CW Radio days. Notably, Shep contacts a operator in Murmansk, Russia.
[Audio is public domain, Song BAHN FREI OP 45© by SGAE_CS, Photo © by Roy Schatt]

[@davidloder7725]

Great memories of my early ham days, just like Jean's!!!!

[@warplanner8852]

Jean trivializes code by saying "you have arrived when you can send/receive 50 wpm..". To most of us who can send/receive 25 wpm stand in awe folks like Jean who could do that. He was a real pro and a marvelously excellent raconteur. Imagine keeping his radio audience enthralled with CW net procedures? Here he actually turns the net into an almost-human conversation instead of Morse code.
Here Jean describes tropo[spheric] ducting on VHF -- which is actually a fact. Hams in Southern California have talked to hams in Honolulu only using their HTs (handy talkies). Occurs occasionally and is very eerie.

[@davidlong1786]

Back in the 60s when TV reception was only by an outside antenna and what you could pick up over the air ( Usually 5 or 6 channels at most), sometimes we would get a Spanish language swamping out the nearby Channel 3 station. Never got any picture other than a very very fuzzy one. We figured out it was from Cuba after a few times this happened which is a bit distant from North Georgia, USA.

[@theroguetomato5362]

Enemy of the State had code when you saw the satellite. The code was CQ CQ CQ -- not likely what a satellite would transmit.

[@NoPrivateProperty]

Jean suggested learning code to his son Randy. Randy never learned, and Jean didn't have any interest in him after that. Jean split with a young blond just like his old man. Excelsior

[@solrosin]

This isn't the Code School story. The Code School story is about when he was in Radar and was somehow sent to Code School with a lot of other veteran operators.

[@frederickburke9944]

I'm looking for that episode too! If you find it, please point me to it.