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A Bit of History.


The Globe Wireless stations, the last coast stations in North America to use Morse, closed down their Morse operations on Monday, 12 July, 1999. The call signs involved are WCC/WNU which will be keyed from Lousiana and KPH/KFS which will be keyed from Half Moon Bay, CA. The term call signs instead of stations is used because in the cases of WCC and KPH, formerly the calls of the two great RCA stations on the east and west coasts, their original transmitting plants were shut down years ago.

The frequencies are:
WCC/WNU
KPH/KFS
500 KHz
12826.5 KHz
17117.6 KHz


500 KHz
8444.5 KHz
17184.8 KHz
Dick/"RD", is reported to have been at the Half Moon Bay site to participate in the closing ceremonies. Dick Dillman, W6AWO, is the Chief Operator at K6KPH of the Maritime Radio Historical Society. Perhaps he has more recordings come in from others. He had a special request for recordings. He can be reached at ddillman@igc.apc.org.

I recorded the two following .WAV on my DX-398, in a mad rush to not miss the final moments of CW on the Ship-to-shore stations WNU and KFS. This is history, folks. No longer will CW be used on these services.

I was using an Outbacker antenna with the tap at the 15 meter connection. I recorded my two samples with my Sound Blaster 32AWE card, from the Radio Shack DX-398, switched to USB. Due to the RF Overload from local broadcasting, however, there exist some odd modulated tones. But, that's the beauty of CW... you can pretty much decipher the code no matter how the modulation is made.

The Code on Air - note: very rough copy! Recorded by NW7US.
  • Frequency: 17117 - WNU smaller file
  • Frequency: 8444 - KFS 3+ megs (two ops?)
  • NEW: The End of Transmissions - Recorded by WB8RCR
  • Frequency: WNU
  • Frequency: KFS



  • copyright, 1998, 1999 Tomas Hood (NW7US), all rights reserved.

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