What broke down in the Marconi room?

[DonJ]

was the last sent by Phillips as it matches what Bride said was done before they abandoned the wireless cabin.[/QUOTE]

There is one problem about accepting evidence from Bride since, while in America he gave 3 interviews and each one placed him in a different place as Titanic sank.
1) he claimed he was with Jack Phillips in the wireless room to the very last
2) He was reported to be helping to unship one of the Englehard boats
3) He was reported to be UNDERNEATH that same Englehard as the musicians played the last piece of music which he claimed was 'A Songe of Autumn'. How could he have heard it from underneath a boat.
Thus, much of his evidence must seem qurstionable.

 

[Dave Gittins]

In a letter to the Marconi company dated 27 April, Bride said the trouble with the radio was on the night before the collision, in other words, Saturday, 13 April. This can be confirmed from the radio records in that valuable book Signals of Disaster. There's a gap in the messages sent on the Saturday night until not long before sunrise.

Like DonJ, I don't trust Bride very much, but this time his story is independently documented.

 

[Mila]

Sam, could this skip distance explain something that's long puzzled me. Apart from Virginian's very late reception of CQ, all the other ships seem to have lost contact with Titanic well before she sank. Yet we are told Phillips kept repeating his distress calls to the end.

Could there have been some kind of dead zone within 40 - 50 miles of Titanic?

"Skip" of radio signals happens when a super refraction is present. In this situation one could recieve signals from nearby stations and from far away stations, but could miss signals from the stations located in between. Of course lost signals by the end might have been due to the power getting lower, but I read that before the collision there was "skip" between the Titanic and Cape Race. Does somebody know anything about this "skip"?

 

[Steven Christian]

Hi Mila. According to many articles I have read I have not heard that skip was a problem that night. Titanic was working Cape Race quite hard sending and receiving messages. We've all seen the famous quote "shut up, shut up I am busy. I am working Cape Race". It could have been an intermittent problem but I haven't come across it for that night. It was a problem with that type of radio at times. Many people believe that Titanic had the best radio equipment for her day but that's not true. There were already better systems/technology out there but because of patents and questionable practices by Marconi they weren't yet available for use by many. Here's a few links about what I'm talking about if your interested. I'm sure somebody like Parks Stephenson could tell you but I don't know if he comes here anymore.
Cape Race | Receiving Titanic
Radio and the Titanic

P.S. I poked around the board a little and did read where Olympic's radio operator that night did say he was having some problems with "atmospherics". Whether that was a skip problem or not I don't know.

 

[Rob Lawes]

Titanic transmitted somewhere between 500 and 1000khz which is very much in the ground wave region when it comes to wave propagation. There would be a very shallow sky wave which would.be attenuated by the atmosphere far less at night due to the thinner ionosphere layers.

Ground wave transmissions over open water are effected by very little except the power of the transmitter and the size of the aerial.

Large Low Frequency transmitter aerials can be kilometres long to achieve global ranges.

The skip distance of a transmission is the distance between the transmitter and the first returning sky wave. By night because there is no sun to bombard the ionosphere the layers collapse into each other so that it is much thinner. High power, higher frequency transmissions are therefore not attenuated and become space waves. Lower power, lower frequency transmissions are still attenuated but the skip distance is increased.

There is an area called the silent zone which is the distance between the first returning sky wave and the end of the ground wave. This zone can vary in size.

One final thing that can rapidly change ranges is the e-layer of the ionosphere. There is an effect known as sporadic E which is where clouds of charged particles are trapped in the e-layer at night and provide a temporary boost or shortening of sky wave attenuation depending on the frequency being worked and could last minutes or hours depending on the size of the cloud.

The only atmospheric conditions that principally effect ground wave ranges are weather based such as severe rain or thunder storms.

Ground wave ranges on the night the Titanic sank should have been as good as they could have been given the known weather.

Hope that helps.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

(1)So the reason that Evans transmitted his "I say OM..." when he did was simply that he could not hear Cape Race sending to Titanic and thought the frequency was clear ?

(2) And the reason that Evans could not hear Cape Race was not due to "skip" or some other - possibly "freak" condition, atmospheric, etc. - was simply that the overall sensitivity of his receiving apparatus was less than Titanic's - shorter receiving antenna , lower receiving antenna , etc. since Californian was a much smaller ship than Titanic ?

(3) And "Radio Conditions" can be very unpredictable !

 

[Rob Lawes]

Yeah, that's pretty much the size of it.

 

[Steven Christian]

Good explanation. Thanks. You seem to know this stuff pretty well which I don't. Are you a HAM operator? I have an off topic question sort of for you or anyone else. Sometimes when I'm up in the mountains I will turn on the CB radio just to listen. I often pick up people far away. At first I think their just shooting skip. But a lot of them and it seems more than ever are running some big linear amps. They aren't shooting skip at all just power. My question is has the FCC just given up on those guys and not enforce the regs any more. Some of them will say exactly where they are. Just curious.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Hi Steven -
Not sure if that was directed at me or not . LOL.

If so, yes I am a ham (50 years since I was once a teen-ager) and I also worked in radio communications equipment and radar as an Electronic Technician Petty Officer (ET2) in the USN 4 years and the FAA 38 years in radio, radar and computers as an Electronic Maintenance Technician. Also have held FCC Commercial Radio License.

It does seem as if the FCC has given up on regulation on CB. It sounds like it has just gotten out of control. You hear all kinds of all kinds of illegal operations and goings on in CB - linear power amps, truckers asking where the "smokies" are, etc. I hear there is a lot of drug trafficking and a lot other namby-pamby going on too.! Disgusting ! Apologies for the soap-boxing . LOL.

There are probably a lot of "good buddies".....People using CB in a perfectly legal way, but "CB" is a dirty word in the ham fraternity.

I once had a white Mercury Grand Marquis with a ham radio "whip antenna" on the trunk lid that looked a lot like one of the Texas Highway Patrol cars at the time.
I took along a CB on one trip...Mainly just for monitoring. I stopped on an overpass to take some pictures of the scenery . I heard a CB (trucker) say ..."Look Out ! There's a smoky on the overpass taking pictures ! "
( My video camcorder must have looked a little like a radar gun.) ..LOL.

Luckily the place where I bought the CB had a generous refund policy for the CB ! LOL

Meanwhile.....Back On Topic.

 

[Rob Lawes]

Hi Steven

I was a signaller and then a comms engineer in the Royal Navy. Radio Wave propagation was about six weeks of lessons in basic comms school.

Regards

Rob

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Don't get the mistaken impression that I am claiming to be an expert.
Far from it.
You never stop learning.
It seems I have never stopped going to some kind of a school ever since First Grade and now this website is a never ending learning process.

 

[Steven Christian]

Hi Steven

I was a signaller and then a comms engineer in the Royal Navy. Radio Wave propagation was about six weeks of lessons in basic comms school.

Regards

Rob

In the US Navy we had Signalmen when I was in but I understand that rate is gone now along with a lot of other ratings. I don't think they even have the Radioman rating any more. Everything being taken over by computers, satellite, internet. When I was in it took 3 to 4 weeks to write a letter home and get a response. Now I guess they can do video conferences every night back home on the internet. Way different than when I was in. Yeah I know, I also walked uphill both ways to school and back in the snow...*L*.

 

[Steven Christian]

Don't get the mistaken impression that I am claiming to be an expert.
Far from it.
You never stop learning.
It seems I have never stopped going to some kind of a school ever since First Grade and now this website is a never ending learning process.

Well you sound like an expert compared to me on this subject. I know the HAM guys disdain for the CB world. Understandable. I just thought the FCC would be worried about interference with some guy blasting with a 1000 amp linear. From what understand they have a couple of channels on the 40 channel where those guys hang out and test their rigs. Anyway thanks again guys for the explanations.

P.S. "You never stop learning". Absolutely right. When I got my pilots license one of my instructors told me something I always remembered. He said that no matter how many hours you have or how many ratings you get its always best to think of yourself as a student pilot.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Incidentally.......I know this is getting off topic.
But on that trip with the CB (it was the first, last and only one) the truckers seemed to be hanging out on Channel 19, mostly with those reporting where to look out for the "smokies" on I-40 going through Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico..

There seemed to be some channels where it sounded like there were teen-aged "gangs" in those towns as you passed by them.

But there were a lot of other channels that were being used for friendly chats, groups traveling together, where to find the next best restaurant or camp ground, etc.It sounded like the RV's
and trailer groups had their own designated channels. I made some notes on this, but have forgotten what they were.

Back on topic. :
On Marconi it seems Phillips and Bride where the combined RM's and ET''s and the "nerds" or "geeks" of their day.

It was very fortunate that they knew enough about the technical aspects of the Marconi equipment to recognize what the trouble was, diagnose it, and most of all how to fix it and get it back on the air. Just think ......If they had obeyed the Marconi instructions that only trained Marconi repair persons were allowed to work on the equipment what the consequencies would have been ?

There have also been a lot of changes in Ratings in the USN, especially in those of a technical nature.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

In the US Navy we had Signalmen when I was in but I understand that rate is gone now along with a lot of other ratings. I don't think they even have the Radioman rating any more. Everything being taken over by computers, satellite, internet. When I was in it took 3 to 4 weeks to write a letter home and get a response. Now I guess they can do video conferences every night back home on the internet. Way different than when I was in. Yeah I know, I also walked uphill both ways to school and back in the snow...*L*.

Well......I spent 36 weeks in ET School at Treasure Island and we marched both ways to school and back to the classroooms, labs and barracks...........But T.I. was flat....no hills up or down.... and it never snowed.....but there was some(?) rain and fog in San Francisco Bay on that island. LOL.