Excerpts from the previous Scuttlebutt issue.
Hi Everyone,
Hi again, from Florida's west coast!
First of all, a reminder that our annual picnic is approaching quickly. It will be held at Wickham Park, Melbourne, FL on November 15th. Hope to have a great turnout Weather should be great at that time of year. See elsewhere in this newsletter for more information.
As I write this, we are in what's referred to as the 'height' of the hurricane season, and yet, no hurricanes have made landfall. We've been lucky so far, but that's no reason to let your guard down. Be vigilant and know what to do if one does show up. There is a link on our web site's home page to an excellent hurricane guide for boaters. Check it out.
Because of vacations, trips, cruises, etc., we are constantly in need of replacements for the various positions for the Waterway Net. If you are interested in any of the positions; Net Control, Weather Reporter, Fleet Captain, Relays, etc., let me or any of our officers know and we will consider using you in the future. Thanks again, for all those who do volunteer!
Bill. . .N4UMS, Commodore
Oyster Bay, LI: We decided that south and west was better than Maine for Hurricane Bill's storm swell. We assumed LI sound would attenuate any significant storm surge, hence Oyster Bay. It did.
Most recent legs were Boothbay, Me - Portsmouth, NH, Portsmouth - Gloucester, MA, Gloucester - Hadley Harbor (just west of Woods Hole), Hadley Harbor to West Bay, Fishers Island, Fishers Island - Oyster Bay.
The Hadley Harbor - Fishers Island leg (8/20) was especially interesting due to visibilities less than 1/16th in fog. Wind was negligible. Seas were slow rolling from the south, maybe 1 to 2 feet. This leg runs down Buzzards' Bay across Rhode Island Sound south of Newport and through a small sometimes turbulent cut (Watch Hill Passage) at east end of Fishers Island which is one of the connections between Long Island Sound and open water.
Current was favorable until we reached Watch Hill Passage and then reversed so that we were cruising uphill the last 6 miles or so. For us, it makes a difference. This Summer, we had been running 1600 rpm at 6 knots but these very long days seem better run at 1800 and 6.5 knots. Current gave us over-the-bottom of 7.5 to 8 knots for most of that leg, then 5 knots from Watch Hill to West Bay.
We left Hadley Harbor at 5:15am with just enough light to pass among the boats in the harbor and get into Buzzards' Bay. Then the fog dropped visibility to less than a boat length and we went IFR. There are few rules about operating in these conditions and of course no positive traffic control except in some of the larger harbors like New York. The ColRegs require that you sound a fog horn at specific intervals and run your navigation lights. You are obligated to avoid other traffic by whatever means are available to you, but you are responsible for the effectiveness of the means you choose.
There was little traffic until 7:00 am. Then it built up steadily until late in the afternoon. Visibility varied between 100 yards and none, but mostly none. I assume that almost everyone was running on GPS plotting - either computers or purpose-built instruments made by RayMarine, Garmin, etc. We use a computer. This means that everyone so equipped knew where they were and could control their courses.
Radar was another thing. Most boats seemed to have it and were using it to co-ordinate courses with other traffic. Others who didn't have it identified themselves as "Blind" but did give position and course information.
Almost everyone was on Channel 16, but... We passed 2 boats on erratic courses and attempted to raise them to no avail. We suspect that many sailboats do have VHF radios, but they are installed in the cabin and can't be reached from the helm, so they don't respond to calls. It is possible to operate using soundings and compass, but this doesn't work very well on a bottom without a constant slope such as Rhode Island Sound. I concluded that these boats must have been steering by hand from gps displays and were needle chasing.
As the morning developed, Channel 16, VHF, started to carry position reports, which included name of boat, present position, course, speed, as well as bearings and distances to nearby traffic. There might have been 20 to 30 boats out there in the waters between east end of Long Island and Buzzards' Bay; a few ferries and other commercial boats but mostly civilians
Channel 16 was constantly busy with this sort of traffic until someone in a Coast Guard plane decided to read the entire Bill forecast. This announcement occluded all our important communications for several minutes. At the conclusion of the report, someone asked if he was done and if he would not repeat the report since we all needed the channel for traffic avoidance communication. Nothing further was heard from the CG.
Most of us were talking to boats within a mile of us. Our JRC 4kw radar shows electronic wakes of targets. This feature works as a function of target's distance traveled between sweeps. It works better for slow traffic at closer ranges. We've picked 1 1/2 miles as a good traffic detection distance. At this range we can almost always distinguish marks, traps and moving traffic.
Boats moving over 15 knots will pop up and become an issue a bit suddenly at this range, but the people who go this fast in zero visibility are very sharp with radar and apparently have systems which read out headings and speed of swept traffic.
It's a bit bizarre to be queried as "traffic at (our present position) 6 knots on course 271.5." I can't read to 1/2 degree on anything we have.
So the day went on. We would identify ourselves, give position, heading and speed and note following overtaking traffic 3/4 mile aft. The overtaking traffic would then identify themselves and request passing on our port side minimum clearance at 1/8 mile. They would do it and we would never see them.
One of the strangest observations on this leg was a target that moved in a large circle. Lobster boats can look like this as they go from trap to trap, but they start and stop and this can be seen at 1 1/2 mile radar settings.
This target didn't stop.
It turned out to be a larger lobster float on a long warp that was being oscillated by the current.
The frequent position and course reporting seems to have come up spontaneously. We generally do a Securite call with this information when we leave port in restricted visibilities and after that only when we paint other traffic. This day wound up with people making position reports at about 10 minute intervals and evolved into a consistent format with boat name, present position, course, speed and any targets and their relative positions, and monitored channels. I've never heard it happen so neatly before. It was impressive.
Ten years ago next April the Morse code requirements for ham licenses was dropped. Some speculated that CW activity (like old soldiers) would fade away. Some think that because Morse was used by Marconi (see below) 100 years ago that it is antiquated. Not so. There have been a well documented increases in CW Morse activity in the past ten years. This includes many DXpeditions that had more CW contacts than SSB and an increase in CW logs submitted for contests. It also includes our own CW net that has prospered for 19 years and now on many days has more checkins than the WRCC SSB net.
It is interesting that in these 19 years there have been more technical advances in CW Morse than in SSB, including memory keyers, code readers, narrow filters and many new paddles. This is not surprising because CW is so narrow (40 cycles) and is adaptable to computers. In fact the first keyer with read out display was by our own Sam Ulbing N4UAU, Uncle Albert's Unique Keyer, see January 94 QST. (Sam is also the editor of The Net Guide.) The CW portions of the ham bands are active. You don't have to ask how things are spelled or pronounced. If your hand shakes you can use a keyboard. With head phones you can transmit and receive CW without waking the YL. Sorry, but you can't hear the sound of your own voice. Come and join our merry Morse makers on 7.050 MHz 7AM ET (and B4).
I have been reading an interesting new book "Signor Marconi's Magic Box" by Gavin Weightman. It is a non technical biography of Guglielmo Marconi and the history of early 2 way radio, with many good photos. This was a time of spark gap transmitters and coherer receivers. It is amazing how crude the equipment was and how slow the Morse code was. Morse code was used by Marconi but was developed long before and used on telegraph lines all over the world at much faster speeds. It was reported in 1903 about the Marconi station at Poldhu South England "the fifty-horsepower sent out messages at two and a half words per minute."
73 es 88 to the YLs de ND7K - dit dit.
I sometimes wonder what will be most interesting to you. Shall I write about practical earthy things like sore throats and managing burns, or the more esoteric things like how DNA fits into cancer research. Give me some feed back. Really: QSK! In this issue I'll deal with so called "defensive medicine." It has been mentioned in the "national health care bill" debates. It warrants some discussion because some "defensive medicine" examples will give you an insight into how doctors think, and that's always a plus.
A classic example of defensive medicine is the case of a 50 year old woman who comes into an emergency with a headache. She is there because the headache is so severe she cannot tolerate it. The triage nurse signs the patient in, finds her blood pressure is a little high (168/95) but pulse and temperature are normal. The ER doctor, well trained, takes more history, learns that the headache "is all around the top of the head." It has been present 5 hours, and is similar to some previous headaches but "worse." Past doctors had diagnosed her headaches as "migraine." There are no abnormalities in the neurologic exam. except one eye pupil is slightly larger than the other.
In this example the ER Doc. has several management pathways to choose from. He can give the woman pain shot "A," a narcotic. He can give the woman a pain shot "B," an effective medicine but a non narcotic. Or he can spend $1,500 and order a CAT scan of the skull and brain. (PS: Most headaches are not life threatening!)
The thought process: The doctor thinks. . . "I find no neurologic defect in this woman. She has had similar headaches in the past. The slightly enlarged eye pupil is probably a red herring. If I can give her pain relief either by the migraine remedy or the pain shots, I will have solved her problem, and mine, efficiently."
Or he might also think. . ."This woman has a headache worse now than previously. I could be missing a brain tumor that started in the past few weeks, or maybe she has the early stages of a bleeding into the brain. If I miss detecting these it will be bad for her, but also, she, or her heirs, may issue a malpractice suit against me. I'd better order the $ 2,000 test." You see?! The Doctor could go either way, depending on how his thinking is influenced.
Another example is that of a chest x-ray taken in an emergency room. The patient is a 65 year old man with fever and cough and yellow sputum. He is not in much distress. The ER doc looks at the chest x-ray and determines "there is no pneumonia," prescribes medications including well-selected antibiotics, and sends the man home. Now the medical standard is, each hospital hires, and pays for, a radiologist to come in the next morning to "officially" read this chest x-ray, adding another $ 150 expense, just so if the ER doc missed something, the hospital won't have to pay in a lawsuit.
Here is an office medicine example. A 35 year old man comes to see the doctor for chest pains. An activities history reveals the chest pains never come on with exertion! The patient's father died 4 months ago of a heart attack and he demands an EKG.
The likelihood of this young man having coronary heart trouble is quite low. Should the treating doctor do an office EKG? The odds are it will be normal. The cost is about $75 dollars. You decide. . . If the resting EKG is normal will the young man be reassured? Must one spend $ 700 for a nuclear stress test to put his mind at ease? How much are we willing to pay, beyond just taking the doctor's word, for "peace of mind?"
These are examples of "defensive medicine" The question comes, "How much risk are we as individuals (or as a society) willing to take in order to reduce the cost of medical care?" Do we make this decision on a personal level, or do we ask medical committees, or government bureaucrats to make these decisions. Different answers come depending on one's level of education, and on one's social conscience. My personal comment is, "Take away the high risk of lawsuit, hold the doctor to professional standards, and you will see the cost of care go down." Most doctors are solid citizens who, just like you and me, want the best for the patient, yet want to earn an honest living. How to weed out the cheaters will always remain a challenge. (I could write on how this is done in medical circles.)
By the way, I do some work as a doctor on cruise ships. My cruise employers assume the doctor's liability risks because they choose good doctors, provide in-service training, and monitor medical effectiveness.
- Jim, K4TCV, Fleet Surgeon
I'm very happy to say that I had nothing to do this quarter!
If you are aware of a club member in need of some Sunshine, please contact me via phone or email (correct in the roster), or at sunshine @waterwayradio.net. Please provide as much information as possible and a point of contact, especially if someone is in the hospital. When you receive flowers, please let me know, so I can confirm they were received.
The Sunshine fund is not funded through your dues, but is supported by donations collected over the year. The Officers and I thank all who have donated to this fund; it is very much appreciated.
- Debbie Lerner KD4GRR
Sunshine Fund Chairman
I can't believe it has been 20 years since we sailed the Bahamas. Even though it has been that long we still remain friends with many of the people we met because of Ham Radio and the Waterway Net; just one of the reasons Ham Radio is so special. We often recall the great times there by thumbing through our album full of silver halide images. For those of you much younger, in the old days we used a thing called film to preserve our memories and it used silver halide as opposed to memory chips everyone uses now.
Anyway we were thumbing through one of them recently and came across one of our very special memories. It was Christmas 1989 and we were anchored in Georgetown, Exumas 'next door' to Bob and Bonnie Gebeaux on Malulani (KA3OCS). As they climbed aboard Voyageur to share a Christmas dinner with us, Bonnie handed us her special creation for the event. Hand drawn on available scrap paper, were The Twelve Days of Christmas- Bahamian Style. We sang that song a number of times that day and each time was better than the last as the rum bottle 'evaporated'.
Perhaps this Christmas when you are anchored in some cozy spot in the Bahamas, you too may want to celebrate the event by singing Bonnie's song. (get full size copies here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/FLAHSTA/ TwelveDaysBahamianStyle#)
It has always been (and remains) the policy of WRCC that reciprocal license designators must be used by any amateur radio operator transmitting on our Net while in the waters of a foreign country. Under existing regulations, each of us has the obligation to obtain reciprocal licenses in advance if we intend to operate in foreign waters. Once obtained, the reciprocal license will carry the proper call sign for use in that country. Typically that will be our original call followed by a reciprocal designator; for example, my Bahamas license shows my call as "K3PKC/C6A."
This requirement does not apply when operating "Maritime Mobile" which means on international waters outside the territorial waters of any nation. When operating MM we are governed by the laws of the country which issued our license.
Information regarding licenses for the Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Mexico and Bermuda may be found at www.waterwayradio.net/intl_operating.htm or go to our home page, click on the Club Info page and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find links to information about other countries.
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