Mystery Transmission

[ARRL]

When I tell this story to friends who are not hams all I get is a blank look, but I know you will understand why the event left me feeling amazed and disoriented. It started out mundanely enough. I was cruising the neighborhood of Oakland, California’s Rockridge Café, a favorite grill of mine in which to have a burger or some soup at lunchtime.



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[KingCobra_CDX882]

Now that was a good one...
I Highly doubt circumstances will present that happening again..

Either that...or there was a possessed car ( possessed by the soul of a silent key)

Your happening was far funnier then what i used once..

Once while on vacation in Lake Havasu Az..

Had rented a nice large party boat...Spent most the day 45 minute boat ride out in the lake and parked at a huge sand bar...

Towards the end of the day...as many of the other boats were starting their return trip back to shore....when a small speed boat that had come by to pick up a few people had started sinking...

So i picked up 7 people ( the driver stayed with his sinking boat (sinking in about 5 ft of water)

What i didnt realize was one of those 7 people in climbing abard my boat tripped over and slightly pulled or wound up mis ajusting a fuel hose...

So 15 mins out and on the return trip to shore...all of the sudden my boat became disabled ( i had not noticed the fuel hoze issue until much later)

Now my friends as well as the 7 from the other boat i picked up...were floating aimlessly ... far to far away from shore to swim (it would have been at least a 2 hour swim even for me)

Anyways...several police boats and several marine patrols passed on by...we all yelled at each one as they passed by..they yelled back or gave thumbs up..but none came to help ( the dummies)

When finally a coast guard cutter ( small one) drove by...they too passed by as we all yelled to them...
Then i got pissed....dang even the coast guard passed us by..

Then i thought...Coast Guard is part of the Navy and everyone in the Navy,Coast Guard and Merchant Marines ALL had to know...

You guessed it code...
So on the horn i tooted out good old SOS ( twice ) and Right away..
the Coast Guard turned around on a dime and came back to us..

meanwhile we had been aimlessly drifting for almost 2 hours..
Where it took me seconds to get the coast guard to stop by using simple SOS code over the horn ( my brother was like...what are you doing with the horn like that...LOL )

Anyways...Nowhere as funny as the car doing code as if possessed
But after the fact...i thought it was funny how some 15 different police and marine patrol passed us by and ignored us...and how the coast guard was in process of doing the same..until i used SOS on the horn...LOL

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

Many years ago when I was still working at the radio station my then boss Dave, VE1UJ, went up onto the roof to check the AC unit. While up there a gust of wind blew his ladder down.Dave went over to the AC unit that was located directly above the engineering shop where I was and started tapping out SOS on the air plenum.Tapping out morse code sounds completely differant than actually sending it with tones as the taps are only a brief second and are all the same length but the pauses between them vary. It took a minute or two for me to realise what he was up too before I went out to put the ladder back up for him.

 

[KingCobra_CDX882]

At least you got the message