Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
 Mike Bell & Carl Koch |
Welcome to my: Coast Guard Photos and Friends page! |
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Click Here for notes, stories and thoughts from "Coasties" who've stopped by this page! |
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Click Here for my main Coast Guard page... |
In July, 2005 Ernest Ritzmann wrote me:
Ex-Coastie Tom Kirk gave me your web site and I found it very interesting. Kirk and I both served on the CGC Blackthorn out of Mobile in the early sixty's. He was an ET and I was an RM1. I am sending you a few pictures of the CGC Sebago when it was in Mobile... I went in the CG in August of 1952, Radio School Groton. I also have several pictures of the Escanaba, Ewing and Blackthorn. I was stationed at NMC 1955-56. Lots of memories. Also stationed at NMG. My name is Ernie Ritzmann (EJR) I was discharged in March of 1965. (My E-Mail address is ritzm at cox.net) I have my ZUT card number 31... I remember joining when I was at the commcen NMG1 New Orleans...
If you're interested in some picture let me know and 73's...
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Lynn C. Smith, of Houston, Texas, provided these scans of
photographs he took himself during 1958 and 1960. The text
beneath each photo is from Lynn as well with additional info
from Roger Brown (KL7Q) added below the four pix:
 Coast Guard Group Station Galveston, Texas (Radio call sign "NOY") On the left is the cw position for 500/457. That was about the only cw se did at NOY and it was all with commericial shipping doing AMVER msgs. We were a little pipsqueak power station compared to NMG [ed note; NMG was the Coast Guard's Radio Station in New Orleans], but we used to love to try and steal amvers from them when we could answer quickly. It was great fun to get a msg from a ship just coming out of the Miss delta area (their back yard) and send it to NY from Galveston - haha. The 2 xmitters in the pic are an an/frt23 on the left and the one we used for 500/457 on the right (small black one). I am sorry I can't remember the type, but for a long while we would have to get up and change the freq from 500 to 457 kcs manually to contact ships sending us amvers. Later in 61 we got another xmitter so we could just flip a switch to change freqs. That array you see above the xmitters is the antenna switch panel we had to use to change what antenna we watned to use to the current xmitter (I know this sounds real antiqueish to you, but thats the way it was for the poor coastie rms's back then). |
 Coast Guard Group Station Galveston Again shown is the cw position on the left. In the middle of the pic is the teletypes. We used on to send amvers to NY headquarters every 2 hours. Not shown on the right is one voice position. We monitored 2182 and 2686 which was the CG voice operating freq for that area. We ran several 40 footers and one 83 footer, one 125 footer and one buoy tender out of base Galveston. This was actually great duty for me because we worked 48 on/48 off and could wear civies on and off the base. I think in the 2 years I was there I wore my dress uniform twice. We also had a/c in our quarters which were separate from the great unwashed ratings - lol. Of course the fact that I lived only 50 miles away, in Houston, didn't hurt either...
[Ed note: Lynn advised me that the person in both photos was RM3 Langford but he didn't have additional info because that was note he had written on the side of the photos when they were taken at NOY in mid 1960] |
 Coast Guard Cutter Sebago (255 Footer out of Mobile, Alabama) Here is the an/frt23 xmitter. We had that for everything but 500 kcs, for which we had another xmitter and I can't remember what it was. At sea we monitored 500, 2182, 6383 (cw daytime) and 4337 (cw nites) and 2686 (voice CG freq). Of course we were under control of NMG.
[Ed note: Lynn advised me that these Sebago pics were taken by him in about November, 1958. Lynn's original letter to me is posted on my "Coast Guard" comments page Here]
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 Coast Guard Cutter Sebago This was the standard radio position on the Sebago of which there were 3. There were usually 2 rm's on duty except the midnight-4 and 4 - 8am watches. We had a lot of rm's just out of radschool (like me) so we would stand watch with an experienced (3 months) rm till we got our bearings. I can't remember the names of the receivers shown there, but the "bug" in the pic belonged to me me. I got my ticket a couple of months out of school. You can see the plug sockets were we put the headfones for various frequencies to monitor. We also monitored around 8 and 12 mg ranges for commercial traffic. The little black box to the right of the typewritter was a remote control pane to switch transmitters if needed. At this time we had absolutly no gear to monitor aircraft tfc at all. When we went out on patrol to CCampeche we took a civilian wx man with us to take obs info and then we sent it in to NMG. |
(From Roger Brown, July 2004)
Hi Rog:
I have been reading coast guard (radioman) related stuff from your nice web site. Regarding Lynn Smith's photographs depicting equipment, I would like to mention that the black transmitter in the right corner is a Westinghouse tdE. They were common onboard coast guard ships and certain shore stations from WWII (when they were manufactured and installed) up into the late 60's (when I left the coast guard - I don't know when they started getting rid of them).
They were a 125 watt A1, A2, A3 (CW, MCW, AM) transmitter consisting of two separate RF decks (side by side in the same enclosure). The left side was MF (as I recall 300-600 Khz) and the right side was HF (3-18.1 Mhz). Of course it was Kcs and Mcs in those days. When I was a radioman (1963-67) the tdE, TAJ, TAB, TBL and the newer AN/FRT-23B and URT-12 were the mainstays on land and sea. Marine VHF had not come along yet. Everything was 2182 and 2670 for civilian to CG comms, and 2678 for inter-CG AM. AM voice traffic was handled on the URC-7 transmitter/Receiver which was located in the radio shack but usually remoted to the bridge. URC-7's were also to be found at all lifeboat stations, light stations, and on small floating units (like 40 footers, etc) All other traffic was CW on 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, or 16 Mhz. working frequencies.
RATT, RTTY, TTY or what ever you want to call it, was just being introduced, and as yet, not being used very much within the CG. The receivers which Smith couldn't name are of the RCA RBA, RBB and RBC series. They were also introduced just prior to WWII. We trained with them (as well as the venerable Coast Guard manufactured R-100 MF receiver) during radio school at Groton. When I entered the Coast Guard they were already slowly being phased out. The primary receivers of my day were the: R-100 (mentioned before), R-388 (Collins 51-J series), RCA SRR-11 and SRR-13A (11 being MF and 13A being HF), R-XXX? (National HRO-60), R-390 (RCA, etc - just starting to appear) and even a few SP-600's (Hammerlund).
For communications with military aircraft we had UHF AM gear (TED-7 transmitter and URR-35 Receiver). On shore duty (NMJ, NOU and NMW43) we utilized land line teletype and, of course, some of the previously mentioned radio equipment. When I entered the CG they were still using Model 15, and Model 19 teletype equipment. NMJ converted to Model 28KSR and 28ASR teletype equipment in about 64-65. As I think about it, in 65 NMJ was just getting a new electro-mechanical tuning device to retro-fit some of its 51J-3 receivers for scanning 8 mc (Amver, OBS, etc). The device consisted of a box attached to the front (in place of the main tuning knob) of the receiver. On the front of the box was a large knob which could be pushed in (to engage) or pulled out (to disengage-engage) the automatic scanning process. Inside the box was a gear-train which, when turned on, would turn the tuning knob so many slow revolutions to the right, automatically stop, reverse it's self, and do the same to the left, repeating it's self over and over again. I remember it seemed pretty high tech at the time.
On ships we used LM-18 Frequency Meters, at primary/secondary Radsta's we used the large FR-4U Frequency meters (w/small 2 in. scope for interpolation using lissajous pattern resolution). I'm starting to ramble on - sorry. It's fun to think back and recall all this stuff. I haven't mentioned this radioman stuff for all these years (nobody really interested). At any rate, there it is. Hope it's of some historical interest to someone - now that RM's and their proudly worn Sparks are no more. Actually, I'm glad that they retired the sparks. I'd hate to see them worn by anyone or stand for anything but what they were originally intended (sorry TC's).
73's and Semper Paratus
Roger Brown, Ex RM2, CWO-3 Ret., KL7Q, ZUT-982
NODX, NODH, NMJ, NOU, NMW-43
Wasilla, Alaska
Ken Yarcho, friend and a climbing leader in the Colorado
Mountain Club (CMC), gave me permission to post these
QSL cards from his father's collection:
 9TW's 1920s QSL card - Ken's father, Carl, was a Ham in Illinois, operating later out of Colorado as WØTW. |
 9TW worked the Coast Guard's experimental station in 1924. |
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