Radio Room equipment

[Lynda Bradford]

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Radio Room Equipment

The QE2 Story would like to thank Radio Officers, Willum and Roger Latham for providing information and photos for this topic.

International Marine Radio Company was responsible for the whole installation on QE2. They engineered and installed the system including the four simultaneous conversation and the two picture circuits

"The quality of the original installation was excellent. The drawings and wiring looms were beautifully done and a number of complex units were made especially for QE2, in particular the control units for the telephone exchange, the duplex units and the rack known as ‘The Coffin’ that contained the speech inversion devices. Speech inversion was known as ‘Condition A’ but all it did was swap from upper to lower sideband so like all the short wave phone calls could still easily be listened in to by short wave listeners. Portishead didn’t have it but Ocean Gate Radio in the USA would occasionally suggest Condition A" Willum

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

Equipment Suppliers

Alkaline Batteries Limited
BAC - British Aircraft Corporation
Elektrisk Bureau/ Ericsson
GEC/AEI - General Electrical Company/Associated Electrical Industries.  In 1967 AEI was acquired by GEC, to create the UK's largest industrial group.
GPO Research 
ITT -  International Telephone and Telegraph subsidiaries included - Standard Telephones and Cables STC in Britain and Australia
IMRC - International Marine Radio Company
Marconi see also - Marconi International Marine Communication Company MIMCO and Marconi Electronic Systems and Graces Guide
Marisat (Marine Satellite Communications System)
Muirhead-Jarvis
Plessey a British-based international electronics, defence and telecommunications company.
Redifon "Redifon was the name used until 1981 for companies in the capital goods businesses of Rediffusion"
STC - Standard Telephones and Cables and Graces Guide

Roger Latham, second Radio Officer on QE2 1968/1969 has written an excellent account of the early years of the radio room. Roger's article will give you a detailed description of the Radio Room Equipment that adds to the information on the images below.

[Lynda Bradford]

Radio Room Equipment 1969/1970's

Radio Room Equipment Layout 1969:
 

Image: Roger Latham


Image: Roger Latham

1969: Automatic self-tuning transmitter developed by International Marine Radio Company.

Type STC 1430  1.2Kw HF Transmitters (crystal controlled) The control units were in the Radio Room and the power amplifiers in the Transmitter room by the Funnel Port Side.  Transmitter No: 1 No: 3 and No: 5. 


Photo: Roger Latham

Quote from Willum: "This black and white photo is from 1969 one of the 3 ST1430 radio positions.

Top to bottom
 The Transmitter control panel,
The Transmitter Channel selector,
The receive aerial selector,
The GEC Shortwave receiver
and at the bottom the switch unit that selected such things as the loudspeaker, the Radio Officers headset, the connection to the telephone exchange, the Condition A option and the lincompex – though that wasn’t used. The box on the left was a switch that allowed the R/O to listen to the receivers on the other side of the room. The 2 round knobs at the top lit up a panel in the middle of the radio room supposed to tell the Chief Radio Officer on which  band and channel the rack was being used.  Completely pointless!"

The original IMR ST1430's did not cover 500Khz so the Main Transmitter until 1972 was an EB400 400W

"....but that could not be remotely tuned from the radio room until Jim Neary (Tech R/O) built a remote control but in so doing invalidated the type approval due to these modifications Jims unit worked fine for years then Brian & Willum refurbished it with a new panel and switches. The Radio surveyors required a Main Transmitter and the EB1500 TX4 was installed in '72 permanently connected to the Main Aerial which was the one that ran aft to the back of the Helicopter Deck. The EB400 was retained and connected to the emergency aerial and was used on 500Khz because Tx4 was usually tied up on the HF Bands for Telex and phone calls."


Muirhead K220 portable fax transmitter


Photo: Roger Latham sending photo from QE2 in early years of the Radio Room.  This piece of equipment had been removed by the time Willum joined the team in 1978. 

1977:  Satellite Communications Equipment: The commercial facilities of the ship were augmented by the installation of satellite communications equipment, which provided a direct link with telephone and telex systems throughout the world. Source: 3 - 20 December Refit

Peter Hughes with the first Satcom machine.

"QE2 was one of the first ships to be fitted with Inmarsat Satellite equipment. The Scientific Atlanta Terminal fitted in 1977 had voice and telex facility with connections to Goonhilly or Southbury Connecticut. Calls were USD10 per minute and had to be set up via operators at the ground stations. We could also send faxes although it was a struggle. Cunard’s Radio & Electronic services developed the Marinet System that latterly provided an in-house email service. More channels were added as more mushroom domes popped up on the top of the ship." Wullum

[Lynda Bradford]

Radio Room Equipment 1985

Radio Room looking forward or starboard:




Image and titles: Roger Latham

Console 1 Equipment



Console 2 Equipment



Images and titles: Roger Latham

Radio Room Facing Starboard



Console 3


Console 4


Images and titles: Roger Latham

Facing Starboard or Aft




Photo: Roger Latham

Comment from Willum- re above image: "Facing aft these are Bays 1 and 2, but in the middle is the STR910 400w HF Transceiver remote control. This transmitter was a 1984 retrofit and was used exclusively for Sitor Telex. The handset hanging off the TV monitor (A second SATnav remote display salvaged from one of the baggage x-ray units) connects to the STR910 but we were not able to patch this transceiver through to the telephone exchange for calls."



Console 5

[Lynda Bradford]

Willum recently found this photo of the Bay 5, the main Telex Bay of the Radio Room that was used to send and receive HF Telex. 


Photo: Willum

"The Creed 444 Teleprinter and the Creed tape reader  on the right are shown  plus the Bay 5 rig that Brian Martin and I made.

This bay used Tx5 the ST1430 that had to be manually tuned but we wired in access to all the other transmitters via the patch panel with the red jumper that I made. In the photo it is shown connected to TX2 the EB1500 transmitter in Bay 2.

Bay 5 was at the forward end of the port side bench by the port hole, - you can see the curtain on the left.

This bay has a Racal Receiver in it that wasn't used very much as its performance wasn't as good as the Skanti Receivers.

Top to bottom:

Racal Aerial preselector
Tx 5 control
Home made patch panel TX and Rx Selector plus loudspeaker
TX 5 Exciter
Racal HF Receiver
Marcons Spector SITOR Encoder / decoder
To the right is the HF Synthesiser for the TX5 Frequency
To the far right the Creed Punched tape reader used when sending telexes.

I bought a second hand teleprinter in Devon that we put inthe bureau so that they could bring up punched tape for the famous 'midnight telex'

From the radio room point of view this was generally the busiest point in the room where telexes were sent and received all day long.

Willum "

[Rod]

When you read posts like this, it shows what a talented bunch of people we had working on the ship!

[June Ingram]

Well said, Rod !

[Pete Hamill]

When the ship can find itself extremely isolated, you need extremely competent people capable of overcoming whatever gets thrown at them. You can't just call out the standby engineer from the company based ashore.

There was always an overlying feeling of confidence as a passenger knowing you had the best people looking after you - most of whom you never met.