Author Topic: Roger Latham: Radio Room Article (5)  (Read 1042 times)

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Online Lynda Bradford

Roger Latham: Radio Room Article (5)
« on: Aug 13, 2020, 09:58 AM »

Roger Latham has researched and written this article and reserves the ownership of the this work, which should not be used without Roger's permission.

The Early Days of the Radio Room

Special Training for Radio Officers for service on QE2 in 1968
During 1968 up to four of the selected radio officers including myself attended a number of special training courses on the maintenance of the equipment to be installed as well as other courses.
These courses included:-



see also Radio Officers and Training topic

Staffing on QE2
The previous liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth had been staffed by radio officer hired from IMRC (International Marine Radio Company.
The QE2 was different and Cunard directly employed its radio officer from their own branch “Cunard-Brocklebank Radio Section”. This had employed radio officers since 1922 It always insisted on the highest qualification for its radio officers. In 1971 the section became known as Radio and Electronics Services.

The radio staff on QE2 consisted of:-
  Chief Radio Officer
  1st Radio Officer
  2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Radio Officers.
 
In 1968/69 was QE2 2nd Radio Officer responsible for maintenance as well as helping as required including watches. The 3rd 4th and 5th radio officers worked shift work similar to navigation staff of 4 hours on 8 hours off.
 
The Chief and 1st Radio Officer filled in as additional staff as required...
During maiden voyages and later 2 typists also were used mainly to operate the teleprinters.

Functions of the Radio Room:
Routine checking of MF and HF Coast Stations for messages
Sending radiotelegrams to Coast Stations by MF or HF
Typing received radiotelegrams from Coast Stations by MF or HF and distributing them
Typing up and receiving telex messages to Coast Station
Receiving and sending MET observations and MSG ( Ships service messages)
Setting up and maintaining one or two HF radiotelephone circuits for the ships telephone exchange
Setting up satellite telephone circuits for the ships telephone exchange.
Sending photographic pictures mainly to the UK
Receiving a special copy of the Daily Telegraph on the ship by radio telex or Piccolo system.
Maintaining a listening watch on 500 kHz for distress traffic.
Maintain all radio office and certain navigational equipment such as radars, radio direction-finder and echo-sounders
« Last Edit: Oct 10, 2022, 11:43 AM by Lynda Bradford »
I was proud to be involved with planning QE2's 50 year conference in September 2017 in Clydebank

Online Lynda Bradford

Re: Roger Latham: Radio Room Article (5)
« Reply #1 on: Oct 13, 2020, 09:26 AM »
The Design of the Radio Receiving Room and Transmitter Room:

The radio receiving room was located forward on the boat deck. This was close to and forward of the 736 Club -  which later became the Queens Grill.
The transmitter room was located further aft in the superstructure at the base of the funnel.
These rooms were planned by IMRC (International Marine Radio Company) who had operated the previous two Queens.  The design was difficult due to some constraints by the designers of the ship and other operational factors!

Radio Receiving Room

Layout: The room was approximately 23 Feet (7 metres) square. There were two operating consoles installed on the starboard side of the room with two central large desks.  On the port side was a bench and two racks with RTTY and Piccolo  equipment.

See also Radio Room Equipment topic

Operating Consoles

I have numbered the operating consoles Console 1 to 5 from left to right.
As installed initially there were four operating consoles however at some time later another console was installed which I have called “Console 3”.

The consoles were cleverly designed so that up to 4 radio officers could operate simultaneously from a seated position or alternately two radio officers operate the same equipment also from a seated position. This was achieved by the forward and aft vertical Console 1 and 5 being able to be rotated either inwards or turned to face the port side. In practice the consoles were not often rotated as usually 4 radio officers would not be seated.

Each console had an HF/MF receiver, transmitter remote control and exciter. There was also an audio distribution panel.

The consoles had a switch box enabling selection of headphones and morse key to any transmitter. It is to the side of the vertical consoles and mounted at an angle in the desktop of the fixed consoles.
The transmitter selection of band and frequency or channel being shown by an annunciator panel mounted on the starboard bulkhead beneath the local time clock. In practice this was not used much!

Each operating position had an Olympia typewriter to type up radio traffic as received by morse code.

HF/MF Receivers

The receivers were all located and operated in the radio room The receiver antennas themselves were wire antennas which went up to the forward mast used for signalling flags. There was also one receive notch antenna.

Two standard IMR SR401 marine receivers were installed in Console 2 and 4. These were not digital readout.

In order for QE2 to have the best equipment it was equipped with the new HF GEC-Marconi RC410 receiver or possibly RC411 (includes LF). These were installed in Console 1 and 5. By 1985 these GEC RC410 receivers had been removed and replaced with Skanti R5001 receivers.

HF/MF Transmitter Exciters

Each console had a STR1400 Crystal Controlled exciter. Digital frequency readout exciters would come later ! There were two knobs, band control and channel/frequency.

Band control this selected a band from 4, 8, 12, 16, and 22 Marine bands 

The Frequency Knob had a selection of 15 frequency for each band being selected frequencies from the allocated band of frequencies for :-
Radiotelegraphy (morse)Calling and Hi Traffic Working frequencies, Radiotelephone frequencies,
Direct printing (RTTY)frequencies,
Wide band Facsimile  and special system frequencies.

In addition Console 4 which controlled the STR1400 had MF frequencies available.

Audio Distribution Unit

An Audio Distribution Unit was installed in each console. This contained switches  to select the audio input to the relevant console transmitter. This had a selection of audio from the Operator, Telephone Exchange, RTTY, Piccolo and Plessey Racks together with any necessary PTT (Press to Talk ) control function.
It also switched receiver audio into any equipment associated with the above.
Additional functions for Radiotelephone such as Privacy(Speech Inversion) and Lincompex could also be switched into circuit.

Radio Telephone - Circuits

The QE2 had a number of telephone operators located in another part of the ship. The radio room’s function was to provide a radiotelephone circuit to the telephone operators who arranged all the telephone calls. However the circuits did need to be monitored to make sure of the quality of the circuit was maintained.
Whilst QE2 was on liner service across the North Atlantic it was common to operate two radiotelephone circuits – one to the UK and one to the USA. Thus requiring two 1kw transmitters to be available for service

Radio Telephone – Lincompex

Lincompex was a way of improving the quality of radiotelephone calls by compressing the audio on transmission and expanding the audio on receipt. The amount of compression and expansion being controlled by data on a control channel to the side of the audio frequencies. This worked well on point to point circuits and there was a great publicity about using it on QE2. It was tested successfully on the Cunard ship Carmania off the west coast of Africa. It was believed these tests using equipment with the control channel outside the normal audio channel. However this was against maritime regulations and when installed on the QE2 the control channel had to be inside the audio band and restricting the audio bandwidth. This meant the control channel was subject to interference. The result was disastrous and the quality of the resultant radiotelephone calls was often poor and the Lincompex switched out!
When visited in 1985 the Lincompex units had been removed.

Radiotelephone Calls – Privacy Unit

A simple speech inversion unit was installed to give some privacy to radiotelephone calls from eavesdropping! This was used when possible but could not be used on Lincompex circuits!

VHF Radiotelephones

There were two STR60 VHFs installed initially and they could be used for Radphone calls. Later an STR65 was installed in the console

Marisat/Inmarsat

In 1977 Comsat General 3055 Marisat Terminal was installed.

When visited in 1985 the Inmarsat satellite communications system was in use to make some radiotelephone calls and to receive data at 1200 bps ( bits per second) using a modem.

Radio Teleprinter Equipment

In more recent time nearly all ships use what is called SITOR ( Simplex Teleprinter Over Radio) to carry radio telex traffic to and from the ship. However when the QE2 was designed this was not in general use. Most marine teleprinter traffic was carried out with straight RTTY equipment using FSK (Frequency Shift Keying) with no error correction.
 
The QE2 radio room had a rack on the port side with RTTY equipment. A recently found photo shows the rack contained two Eddystone receivers with Crystal channel units used in space diversity mode.

The model of the FSK Modulators/Demodulators is not clear. Possibly the FSK units were made by the USA company Northern Radio.

This equipment in the early days carried most of the radiotelegrams from the UK. The equipment received and sent traffic from the two Creed 444 teleprinters one of which was installed on the port side just beyond the entrance door. If necessary the teleprinters were used to type up 5 unit code punch tape which was then sent when the circuit was working.

As there was no error correction on RTTY the traffic was at time corrupted and required re-runs of radiotelegrams.

When visited in 1985 the ship used a normal Marine Sitor system to send or receive radiotelegrams. This was probably Marconi Specta equipment.

Equipment to Receive the Daily Telegraph on board daily

On previous liners a ships newspaper was received on board by a radio officer typing up a morse code transmission. The QE2 wanted to change this and daily produce a special edition of the Daily Telegraph prepared by them. Prior to the voyage the ship had onboard photos of current events as well as articles and adverts. The news itself was sent overnight in a data stream as a series of newspaper columns and headlines to be fed directly to the Addressograph Multigraph printing equipment.

To receive the Daily Telegraph data two types of equipment were installed, a Piccolo system and a Plessey ARQ Error Correction system.

Piccolo System

Piccolo 1 is a radio communications mode using 32 different audio tones where each tone is a different letter. The piccolo name is from the very distinctive audio sound over the radio!
This was a complete British Embassy Piccolo type rack complete with the following:-
-Racal Aerial Pre-selector
-HF Eddystone 830/7 receiver modified with the local oscillator fed from an accurate digital frequency generator for the local oscillator.
-Digital frequency Generator with selectable frequencies.
-Piccolo 1(32 Tone)Demodulator unit. Probably made by Racal

Adjacent a Siemens Teleprinter (possibly T68)

By 1985 the Piccolo equipment has been removed.

Plessey PT200 Sitor

This was a system of ARQ (Automatic Repeat request) system using 7 unit code where each unit is coded to detect errors. If an error is received it automatically requests a repeat. Details of this were not known but a recently found article about Portishead Radio states this to an early version of SITOR.

Neither the Plessey or Piccolo proved completely reliable and took many hours of work to get a copy of the QE2 version of the Daily Telegraph.

Emergency Operation of the Radio Room

By regulation each ship radio room has to be capable of transmitting and receiving in an emergency for 6 hours even if the main power of the ship has failed. How this was achieved in the QE2 was by regarding the transmitter room as the emergency radio room, where emergency batteries were installed to power an emergency/reserve transmitter and receiver. The transmitter was initially most likely an IMR Type 113.

To operate the main HF/MF transmitter from the transmitter room necessitated carrying a receiver and also ST1400 transmitter exciter if HF required, from the forward Radio Room to the Transmitter Room. Then removing the removing the remote actuators from the IMR ST1400 1kW installed transmitter to allow manual operation! Alternately just to use the reserve/emergency MF transmitter IMR 113.
 
Auto-alarm – Redifon AL29

A radiotelegraph auto-alarm is a radio equipment to sound an alarm if the emergency auto-alarm signal of 4 of the 12 long dashes with 1 second spaces transmitted on 500 kHz is received.

By regulation QE2 was a Class 1 H24 ship requiring continuous watch on the emergency frequency of 500 kHz and should not have needed an auto-alarm. However as radio staff may often be distracted by so many things happening, an auto-alarm receiver was fitted and operated continually to ensure an emergency was not missed.
The auto-alarm was mounted on the forward end of the starboard bulkhead to the right of the radio room clock in the corner.

Muirhead K220 Photo Transmitter and K99 FSK Transmitter

This equipment was used to transmit photos from the ship to the shore. This was mainly for newspapers and publicity. A publicity photo was taken of myself using the equipment on the maiden voyage!

Radio Workshop
To help with the maintenance function a small radio workshop with test equipment was located next to the radio room.

HF/MF ALE Transceiver and Autotelex

When visited in 1985 an ITT STR910 ALE (Automatic Link Establishment) transceiver with MX900 Scanning Autotelex had just been installed. This is capable of automatically scanning 21 frequencies. If the correct selective call it receives it brings up the transmitter on the correct frequency and replies automatically, accepting the traffic. Outgoing traffic is sent without technical assistance.

It was not clear how the unit was installed and whether the receiver was separate from the transmitter – regarded as essential for QE2 operation. Also it is not clear how well this system worked.
This type of system is now common on ships and helped to remove the need for radio officers.


« Last Edit: Oct 17, 2020, 10:54 AM by Lynda Bradford »
I was proud to be involved with planning QE2's 50 year conference in September 2017 in Clydebank

Online Lynda Bradford

Re: Roger Latham: Radio Room Article (5)
« Reply #2 on: Oct 13, 2020, 09:28 AM »
The Transmitter Room/Emergency Radio Room

QE2 Transmitter Room Topic

This room located in the funnel area was far too small for it intended function – even the kennels alongside for the dogs had much more room!

It was a very small area yet operating at least three 1kW transmitter continually each radiating around 1kW of heat each!

Officially it was radio room to use in an emergency but it would have been terrible to use for that purpose as it was crowded with equipment and with no windows.

In a real emergency the transmitter room would have been a dreadful place being a small room, so remote from the bridge area of the ship making communications with the bridge difficult apart from an overworked telephone.

A Personal Comment in Relation to the Emergency Facility
I believe the IMR113 reserve/emergency transmitter and emergency batteries should have been installed in or near the radio receiving room which more have been much more useable, convenient and safer in a real emergency! It could have used for an antenna the receive antenna near the radio room suitably upgraded, This terminates close outside the radio room and goes to the forward mast halyard arm. In an emergency with no mains power there would not be any other receive circuits working to interfere with!

HF/MF Transmitters

A busy radio traffic ship like the QE2 may have up to 4 high powered transmitters operating simultaneously. This means you cannot have any radio receiving antennas close to the operating transmitter antennas. To avoid this, the 1kW HF transmitters were placed aft in a special transmitter room close to the funnel.

Three of the 1kW HF Transmitters were ITT ST1430 transmitters self tuning transmitters which I believe were used by the Swedish Army.

One of the transmitters was a 1kW ITT ST1400 marine type approved transmitter normally tuned manually but modified by IMR to remote tuning using bolt-on actuators. Each of these transmitters was fed from a crystal controlled ITT exciter mounted in each of the 4 operator consoles.

After the change to wire antennas each antenna wire fed to one of the 1kw transmitters. However this there was problem. The transmitters antennas were really too close to one another and therefore the tuning of a transmitter would effect the tuning of the other transmitter. Whilst the ST1430 transmitters were self tuning, after completion of their tune cycle they were not designed to retune if the antenna went off tune but simply reduce power!

By 1985 there had been changes to the transmitters:
- The IMR/ITT ST1400 with its modifications of remote servos has been removed
 - Two remote controlled, self tuning 1kw transmitters Ericsson EB1500 installed in the transmitter room with remote control and exciter EM100 installed in the radio room. One was installed in Console 2 and the other in the Sitor rack which used to be used for RTTY.
- An Ericsson EB400 reserve MF transmitter was installed in the transmitter room. This was modified locally to be remote controlled from the radio room. The remote control was installed in Console 3.
« Last Edit: Oct 17, 2020, 11:11 AM by Lynda Bradford »
I was proud to be involved with planning QE2's 50 year conference in September 2017 in Clydebank

Online Lynda Bradford

Re: Roger Latham: Radio Room Article (5)
« Reply #3 on: Oct 13, 2020, 09:32 AM »
Antennas (Aerials)

Transmitting Antennas
The wire and “Notch” antennas were located close to and using the funnel as attachment or support.
“Notch” Antennas”.

It was understand the QE2 designer wanted no wire antennas to spoil the lines. To avoid wire antennas so called transmitter “notch” antennas were mounted around the funnel. They will be seen in early photos of the QE2 and look like large boxes sticking out at the base of the funnel. There was also a receive “notch” antenna mounted above the wheelhouse making it look as someone stated “A tram indicator board” ! This remained for many years!

The “Notch” antennas were made by BAC (British Aircraft Corporation) and very little information was available as to how they worked. They needed very careful tuning to make them work. The “Notch” antennas were tried earlier on Brocklebank ships and result seems to confirm they worked. However they were very fiddly and time consuming to tune – something the QE2 radio staff did not have with the pressure of work.

Wire Antennas:

By the time of the trials the ship had broken with the designers ideas and had installed many transmitter wire antennas leading to the funnel. It turned out that the wire transmitter Antennas are not that obvious and hardly seen in early pictures of the ship!
The wires were not well separated from each other and this caused problems as shown in the transmitter section.

Receiving Antennas:

The receiving antennas were wire antennas that were attached to the foremast or halyard arm. There was also one receive notch antenna looking, as one person said “like a tram indicator board mounted at the front of the wheelhouse. This remained for many years even after the transmit notches had been removed.
There were also two receiving whips mounted outboard towards the stern in the vicinity of the swimming pool area.
Two VHF notch antennas were mounted on the foremast.

Receipt and Distribution of Radiotelegrams
It was stated that public announcement would not be made regarding any radiotelegrams received. The radio room received and sent radiotelgrams via the hotel staff at the Pursers Office. It was not planned for passenger to come into the radio room although very occasionally they did if they felt it was sufficiently urgent to bypass the system!

When visited in 1985 the ship had installed a “Telemail” system. There was a VDU (Visual Display Unit) in each section originating or receiving telegrams or telex messages. After a section has prepared a message it is sent via a modem to the normal telephone system. The user dials a special number in the radio room which activates a telex punch called a “Telemail” which then punches out a tape. This tape is then sent via Sitor or Inmarsat.

Lifeboat Radio Stations

Two of the QE2 motor lifeboats, the orange ones, were equipped with a complete radio telegraph station using Marconi Salvare II equipment.
These were tested at intervals. (Attached photo taken by myself of the view of the QE2 whilst testing the radio equipment in January 1969 off the Canary Island on QE2’s first trials voyage.

Maintenance of Radio Room and Navigation Equipment:
The radio staff was required to maintain all the radio room equipment as well as certain navigational equipment installed on the bridge such as radar, radio direction-finder and echo-sounders.

Navigational Equipment

Radar: The QE2 radar included the brand new, but still having problems sorted out, AEI A4 Automatic Tracking Radar. This equipment was the forerunner of the modern ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid) that is now standard on large ships. The A4 was designed prior to the use of microprocessors and used large number of logic gates. I did the course on this but could never get near it as it always seemed to have AEI technical staff working on it in port!

Satellite Positioning
The QE2 was equipped with a “Transit” satellite position system. This was the forerunner of GPS. The “Transit” satellite was used by the US Navy to get accurate positions for ballistic missiles as well as survey. In 1967 it was released for civilian use and therefore QE2 had a system.
The strange double helix antenna at the very top of the QE2 mast was the antenna for the “Transit” satellite system. With a lot of work it produced a fix about every hour. There was no display - just figures on a teleprinter. This is a far cry from now with GPS in every mobile phone giving a position every few seconds!
« Last Edit: Oct 13, 2020, 09:37 AM by Lynda Bradford »
I was proud to be involved with planning QE2's 50 year conference in September 2017 in Clydebank

Online Lynda Bradford

Re: Roger Latham: Radio Room Article (5)
« Reply #4 on: Oct 13, 2020, 09:39 AM »
Note:
Special thanks to Phil “Willum” who was a later QE2 radio officer, for helping me with the model names of some of the equipment. Without his help this article would have been lacking in some of the detail!

Roger Latham
August 2020



References
Piccalo https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjfyqyMl8frAhW49XMBHTCbCHwQFjABegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfs.semanticscholar.org%2F1b47%2F79468b745b7eda1b4932bf0cb912cd1fb801.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3CjmvHzeDmxuA3qpY1qlTh
« Last Edit: Oct 17, 2020, 11:08 AM by Lynda Bradford »
I was proud to be involved with planning QE2's 50 year conference in September 2017 in Clydebank