If you are a good telegraph operator

Being a radio operator is a hard and responsible job in the signal corps. Regular night work causes many people to suffer from stomach problems, arthritis and other diseases, and the responsibility is heavy.

The job responsibilities are to directly receive and issue military orders from the commander through the radio; to provide live weather conditions to aircraft in the air at any time; to receive various early warnings and emergency alerts issued by superiors or issued to subordinates immediately during wartime. The emergency alarms at that time ranged from 1001 to 9009 (which was top secret at the time), and each group of numbers represented an emergency order.

Approximate content: 1001 is emergency warning alarm; and so on, 2002 is defense against atomic bombs; 3003 is defense against chemical weapons; 4004 is sudden attack by enemy planes, all aircrafts take off in an emergency... 9009 is to cancel emergency warning alarm, etc. Order, the above alarm must be sent out within 1 minute.

Normal telegrams are divided into three levels: special, urgent and urgent, with corresponding time regulations.

Live weather forecasts are broadcast to each airport on time every hour.

Generally, it tells visibility, wind direction, wind speed, clouds and thunderstorms, etc., with 5 numbers in one group, totaling 6 to 7 groups.

The purpose is to report weather changes at any time and provide meteorological support for night flights.

When sending and receiving telegrams, the effectiveness of the content and 100% accuracy must be absolutely guaranteed.

Once delays and errors occur, it will directly affect the safety of the aircraft and the military operations of the troops, and the consequences will be disastrous.

After our new training, all the staff packed their backpacks and brought all their personal belongings with them, and gathered in the big playground.

Soldiers from various companies are waiting for us new recruits (commonly known as the troops) who are about to be assigned.

At that time, when I saw our comrades who had lived and trained together for three months being taken away one by one by name, I felt a sense of loss and sourness.

And most of us are left to study the telematics profession.

There are not many things that the operator really needs to remember. There are only 10 numbers and 26 letters in the code, as well as some commonly used "notification terms" (contact language) composed of letters, but for copying The speed and accuracy of transmission are very demanding.

In the first few days before the official start of training, I had effortlessly memorized all the things that needed to be memorized.

However, we have to admit that people’s intelligence and reaction levels are really different.

Our classroom should be regarded as the earliest "electronic" classroom.

Each student has a fixed key and a pair of headphones on his desk.

Keyboards and headphones are connected to the podium.

Teachers can monitor any student's transmission at will.

Students can also listen to the instructor’s report individually through headphones.

It's like a cable station all tied together.

The telegraph training course includes dispatching and copying telegrams.

Copying training is divided into alphabetic copying and digital copying. Alphabetic copying is mainly used to contact the code names and communication terms between the two parties. Digital copying is to copy *** numbers, which are telegrams. message.

The faster the newspaper copying speed and the higher the accuracy, the higher the technical level.

The same goes for sending.

No one thought that formal training would start with the pen-holding posture.

You must also learn how to write numbers and letters from scratch, and you must write them word by word in a unified newspaper copy font.

These trainings are mainly to improve the operator's copying speed and make the copied fonts easier to read.

There are obvious differences between the operator and ordinary people when writing 2 and 3.

But this writing habit is actually not easy to maintain. After leaving the newspaper service for a few years, I resumed my ordinary writing style.

After the telegraph training began, we gradually realized how difficult it is for telegraph operators.

According to the older generation of operators, the early operators used the "standing posture" to send messages.

The so-called "standing posture" refers to the fact that when sending a report, the middle finger of the right hand is standing on the button of the electric key.

]In our generation, the reporting posture has changed from the "standing posture" to the "kneeling posture". When transmitting, the middle finger is no longer "standing" on the key but "kneeling" on the key button. Rely on.

In this way, the tender meat under the nail of the middle finger becomes the main hitting point when hitting the electric keys.

For the telegraph operators who were just beginning to receive training, the springs of the electric keys were adjusted to be relatively hard. Therefore, not long after the telegraph training began, almost all trainees had swelling under the nail of the middle finger of their right hand. stand up.

Some people’s fingers were even broken, and the blood and flesh were bloody and horrible. The pain can be imagined.

When the instructor yelled the "hit" command, everyone basically gritted their teeth and tapped the keys... Despite this, the training did not stop.

Until one day, thick calluses grew under everyone’s middle fingers, and they finally passed this test.

Training is boring most of the time. It just cycles between copying and sending newspapers every day.

However, as time goes by, students’ speed of sending and copying reports is constantly improving.

From not being able to understand at the beginning, to copying 10, 20, 30,...80 codes per minute, and finally copying 120 codes per minute, and continuing to copy more than 1,200 digits...

p>

The main task of telegraph training is to teach recruits to receive and send telegrams to a certain level.

The training is divided into two parts, one is training on copying and receiving telegrams; the other is training on sending telegrams.

The newspaper copying training is to restore the Morse code sent by the other party to 10 *** letters or 26 English letters.

Among them, the 10 *** letters are divided into long and short codes. The 1 in the short code is: one short and one long, that is, "dip, da"; the 1 in the long code is one short and four long, that is "Dick, click, click, click, click."

The training team spent most of their time training on copying and receiving telegrams.

The reason is very simple. Copying and receiving telegrams relies on a lot of repeated practice to make the brain form a conditioned reflex to the sound of the code. After training to a certain point, as long as the ears hear the sound of the code, the brain does not need to distinguish what the code is. "Tick tock" or "tick tock" immediately write the correct letter directly on the paper.

The newspaper copying training is very boring. We wear headphones and hold pencils in our hands for 8 hours a day, listening to the sound of telegrams and copying on paper. Our brains are under high tension for a long time. state.

Sometimes the teacher also adds some interference noise to the telegram sound to simulate the actual reporting environment.

Although everyone trains very hard, not everyone can eventually reach the level of copying high-speed code.

Because once the speed of the telegraph is higher than 120 letters per second, "coding" technology is needed to achieve even writing, so that the telegram can be copied completely and without error.

The so-called "pressing the code" means that when the other party sends the first letter, the copywriter is not in a hurry to write, but keeps the code he has heard in his heart. When the other party sends the second letter, , just started to write the first letter on the paper.

It is said that a master of "coding" can press up to 4 letters. That is to say, after the other party's telegram stops, the copywriter will calmly and evenly press the last set of letters. On paper.

"Code compression" technology is a special talent. Only those with this special talent can copy high-speed telegrams up to 160 letters per second.

Although I am relatively smart and studious, I do not have the talent for "coding", so my highest telegram copying speed in the training team was only 140 letters per minute.

The reporting training is more arduous and more difficult.

First of all, you need to pass the key-holding test.

There are kneeling and standing postures for reporting: the kneeling posture is to kneel on the first knuckle of the middle finger on the key handle, the index finger is naturally bent, and the fingertip points on the round end of the handle. , gently hold the round end of the key handle with your thumb.

The standing position is to place the index finger and thumb side by side, and point the two fingertips on the grip of the electric key.

Regardless of whether you are kneeling or standing, when sending a message, you must use your wrist force to drive the middle finger and press the key down, so that the electrical contact above the key briefly contacts the electrical contact below the key, so that the "drip" sound It came out in one click.

The standard length of "click" is three "dip". Use your wrist to control the contact time of the key contacts to form a "click" sound.

The sender relied on such gestures to send Morse code to space through wireless equipment.

In order to ultimately achieve high-speed reporting, reporting training must follow scientific rules and proceed step by step, so beginners all use the kneeling position to send messages.

In order to exercise your wrist strength, when you first learn to send a message, you must adjust the spring of the sending mechanism tightly, adjust the distance between the keys to a large distance, and send slowly one stroke at a time.

When the instructor feels that this level is relatively stable, the students can gradually loosen the spring, reduce the distance between the contacts, and increase the transmission speed accordingly.

Since the first knuckle of the middle finger is kneeling on the key when sending a signal, it didn’t take long for the nail base of the middle finger to be dented by the top of the key, and then became red and swollen, and some students even wore it. The skin cannot touch the electric keys at all the next day.

But the training cannot be stopped. Everyone can only endure it until their fingers are calloused and they adapt to the electric keys.

By the way, the identity of radio operators is the easiest to identify because the first knuckle of their middle finger has been pressed on the key for a long time. Generally, the nail of the middle finger is sunken. I was also like this at the beginning. .

Secondly, you must master the transition from wrist strength to finger strength.

You must know that low-speed telegrams are relatively easy to send. Generally speaking, after more than a month of training, low-speed telegrams can be sent by relying on the rhythmic movement of the wrist.

But to send high-speed telegrams of more than 120 per minute, it was impossible to achieve it by relying on wrist strength.

Think about it, there are 120 characters per clock, and each character has an average of 3 "dip" and one and a half "dah", plus the gaps in the bytes, the up and down of the wrist every second It takes at least 5 times of movement, so it is impossible to achieve high-speed transmission by relying on the strength of the wrist alone.

Therefore, only by relying on the sender to transfer the wrist strength to the finger strength in a natural way through long-term training, and through the simultaneous movement of the wrist and fingers when sending the message, can the message be conveyed. Telegrams were sent at extremely high speeds.

Since everyone's wrists and fingers shake differently when sending a telegram, experienced receivers can often identify who sent the telegram based on the sender's gestures.

Also because the strength of the wrist determines the speed and quality of the transmission, in the army, the company leader and the operator themselves cherish the operator's wrist very much and generally avoid participating in heavy physical tasks as much as possible. In an era when labor and politics became prominent, some people criticized the army for training radio operators into revisionist seedlings that could not be carried on their shoulders or lifted in their hands.