San Francisco Radio Callsign "KPH"

San Francisco Radio's callsign was heard for the last time on July 12th 1999, or so it was thought.......

The callsign was heard again on July 12th 2000. This was due to the Maritime Radio Historical Society.

The story of San Francisco Radio Callsign "KPH" can be read HERE on the excellent site of the Society

Here are a few pictures of the station, many more can be seen on the above site, these pictures were sent to me by Rolf Marschner DL9CM. Click on the picture for a larger version.
 
This is position 1, the main operating position and the MF position. The man at the key is Ray Smith who was at the time or became later the senior Morse operator at the station. He was also the person who sent the last Morse message from KPH at Bolinas/Point Reyes. The receiver at Ray's right hand is particularly interesting. It is a Marconi 2207C "Atlanta" which is a LF/MF/HF receiver covering 15kc to 28Mc. I was unaware that this model receiver was ever in use at KPH. The rack behind Ray is topped with a Hallicrafters TO keyer. The rack itself contains slots for papers and, immediately below, a blue rack panel with white pushbuttons. These are used to assign antennas to each of the three receivers at the position. Below that is a lighter blue rack panel with toggle switches with a LED above each switch. The switches are used to select which transmitters will be keyed by the position. Below that is a grey rack panel with toggle switches. These switches were used to select the CQ wheel, a pre-recorded message (such as the traffic list) or manual keying. Below that are two grey panels, the top one being, I think, an audio patch panel and the one below being a panel containing four monitor speakers. Much of this equipment is still in use at position 1 as a look at the pictures on our Web site will reveal. Over Ray's shoulder are two receivers, a Kenwood R-1000 and a National HRO-500. The keyboard atop the R-1000 is the source of the CQ wheel. I suspect that the Teletype machine behind Ray was used to punch pre- recorded messages on tape and then play them back using a Baudot to Morse converter. This suspicion is supported by the loops of tape hung next to the Marconi receiver. (Text by Dick Dillman)
  Photo 2: Here we have the smiling face of Warren Reese, Morse operator and later the transmitter technician in charge at the Bolinas transmitting plant. He is the man who actually turned off the switches when the plant was shut down. He is at position 4, which was called the "window seat" for obvious reasons, at the controls of three Kenwood R-1000 receivers. The rack behind him is similar to but less complex than the one at position 1. It is without the wheel/announcement selector panel and the speaker panel. Warren's keyer is perched atop one of the Kenwoods and his Thermos and lunchtime reading are tucked away in the corner to the right of the rack. (Text by Dick Dillman)

  Click HERE to return to home page