It's Friday night. Nick maneuvered the weekend off of work to get some space. Plan is to sleep in and and ease into it. Tonight, however, he's at the workbench, which now includes a PS/2 Model 50 that Ned had snagged for a bargain from the plant back around Christmas, not really calling it a Christmas present but to Nick it was the best thing since that year he got the boombox.
The workbench is big and solid, pretty much built-in-place over a weekend, with very sturdy shelving. It's construction back in junior high was almost prophetic, it had been a place of trial, error, plotting, frustration, and triumph, sometimes even in the same day. Before the IBM had gotten a place in the side, the middle had gotten his granddad's prize possession, an Icom IC-745 transceiver for the high-frequency (shortwave) bands, that his household had inherited long before it seemed right. Taking possession of an icon never seems right, if it can't be where it was then it should be enshrined in a museum.
Paps had kept it beneath a dust cover, so Nick does as well. Since he's not licensed, although considering it, he doesn't keep a mic hooked up or anything else, just uses for receive with a thin wire he had strung through a window and over some trees with the help of a slingshot. He has been amazed at how well it does with just that wire, since his only previous access to shortwave were via multiband desktop dial-tune radios. Thanks to the Icom manual he's been able to figure out the sidebands and even zero in on the CW (Morse Code) signals here and there.
There was something about the code, simply put, he had the need to de-code it. Perhaps this was the same impetus for pursuing the RTTY project, to get to the bottom of something. Who was sending the signal, and what were they saying? Only one way to find out.
Nick had listened to some of the training tapes over the past summer, and could copy the slowest speed and maybe a little faster. More and more he enjoys listening to the CW practice transmissions that came from back east at 9 o'clock weeknights. After that they went into the bulletins at a faster speed, but at that point it was time for Star Trek TNG at 10.
In some of Pap's old books he learned a bit about operating procedures, Q-signals and such, evidently he had done some real traffic handling. Pap was a natural having served in Signal Corps during two wars, and Ned had thought at one point he trained traffic handlers in the amateur service, maybe even for the armed forces auxiliary, or along those lines
So, Nick was hoping to listen to the higher code speeds and go from there. He had found the magazines at the campus library that gave the schedules and frequencies for the practice transmissions, not broadcasts. Amateur frequencies are meant for two-way communication, but if you make an announcement (QST) then it's not a broadcast. In the warmer months he could usually hear the first part of the 9pm transmission on the 14 MHz (20 meter) band, then in winter he had to try the 7 MHz and sometimes 3.5 MHz, but he believes he'd need a longer antenna wire for lower bands.
He had noticed in the training books that you end a CW conversation with '73' and then 'SK', for 'silent key'. This is also the term they use in the magazines to honor hams who have passed on. Nick was still coming to terms with Paps being an SK. His visitation ran two nights and was swarmed, no telling how many brass-pounders he'd shaken hands with, mixed in with guys from the service.
For now, he'll be glad to solder up a home version of his RTTY circuit and feed it into his desktop PC. He's got ready access to the parts plus employee discount. He's seen hints that that there are also transmissions for ASCII and something called AMTOR, which might be a good challenge for his new found C skills.
Sometimes the best way to cushion the loss of someone is to get inside their world, after a time.