Visiting KPH/KSM

Photos of our visit to KSM, the last remaining commercial maritime radiotelegraph station. Photos of our visit to <a href="http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey=2703465">KSM</a>, the last remaining commercial maritime radiotelegraph station. When we were there, they were sending press copy using CW at 4.350MHz. They also transmit on other frequencies including 482kHz. The station is run by the <a href="http://www.radiomarine.org/">Maritime Radio Hisorical Society.</a>. The transmit site is in Bolinas CA, and the receive site at Pt. Reyes. The station started in the mid 1910s with a rotary spark transmitter. It then advanced to an Alexanderson alternator. It eventually moved to vacuum tube transmitters. It was initially served as a point to point service competing with undersea telegraph cable in the Pacific. Later it moved to ship to shore telegraph communications. A history of the station is available <a href="http://www.american-marconi.org/Downloads/assets/Livingston%20Pacific%20Wireless.pdf">here</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexanderson_alternator">Wikipedia</a> shows alternators being installed in Bolinas in 1920 and 1921 at 22.9kHz and 19.2kHz.

Jim Seaman adds "When the international SOLAS treaty was adopted in the 1974, there was a transition period from telegraphy to GMDSS that ended in 1997. The ships radio officer has mostly disappeared as a result, and the bridge crew now handles the radio. CW capability does not even exist on modern ship's radios. There are only a handful of
ships that still employ radio operators, with the Matson Line being one of them, and a number of cruise ships. The remaining radio officers have largely been converted into "Master Electronics Officers" and gained new responsibilities. Everything from the ships network, to the fire alarm, to 2-way radios used by the crew, to PC repair. The FCC record of 500 kHz stations is misleading. Commercial radiotelegraph station licenses often have long lists of authorized frequencies, but there in nothing in the rules saying that they must be used. The only active US station on 500 kHz is KSM. I'm not sure about the other museum station, WNE. It's those two stations that keep the flame burning. The Shipcom stations are still authorized, but not active on 600 meters, and they haven't been active there for decades. Globe Wireless/Inmarsat largely abandoned their HF network starting about 2-years ago (2013), and also hadn't used its MF privileges since 1999."