Thanks for the link, Glenn. I can't imagine being able to send good Morse if I were ever in a similar situation. I think you'll enjoy the book - and an interesting qrz.com bio you've got there!
73,
At Radio College, it was constantly drummed into us, your life may depend on yr keying, sort of focusses the mind a little.
I dont know what cert the RO held, but I know for my training, there was an exam on distress procedures, the pass mark was 100%, then morse testing at the final exam was done by a Post Office Radio guy, there would be a solo test at 20wpm with figs and accented characters as a bonus, then there was a traffic handling test, the whole group did this at once, with the examiner wandering around the testing room, listening to you and you and him, quite unnerving.
If after all this you passed then you got a certificate.
All that meant was that you could to sea as a junior R/O, the company I joined (direct employ not a radio company) was solely UK to NZ/Australia trading maybe a detour to Ja and a trip home round Cape of Good Hope up turn right at Gib through the med discharge all the way back through the Med and then to UK to finish discharge.
Because once you were a sole RO they were long voyages they insisted on 2 trips = 1 year as a Junior before you could go on yr own.
On joining my first ship, I was told on the the day of QTO get me the wx for 1800, duly taken and presented, good yr on watch at 0000 to 0600, then the CRO took over at 0800 - 1400 I did 16-1800 CRO did 20/2200, then round we go again and again.
But for the RO on many occasions people would never know what happened to a ship.
Crossing the Pacific during the night used to be a lonely stretch, once we got in the middle near Pitcairn it really did become a radio dead zone for a few days, just too far from anywhere.
Well done on the shore op for getting it all down.
Interesting to read how they ran the HF search points that explained a few things, we used to have one op per band as a pure SP they didnt handle any tfc, just took the callsign QSS and put the aerial heading on the chit, and maybe a note QTC3 or something, unless it was a Medico then they would stand up and holler whose free and physically hand the chit over to them.
A