I read in my local paper last weekend of the obit of Capt. Bill Abbott, a ships Pilot who worked for decades as a member of the Penobscot Bay Pilots. Bill was 91. Bill also was the managing partner (of Pen Bay Pilots) who created a popular marine VHF radio coast station called Camden Marine. It had 2 working channels and of course ch16, all remote controlled radios on a mountain near the central Maine coast. Here is a link:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2457&dat=19870526&id=CKpJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MA4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=2952,1893922Charlie and his dad bought the company and ran it for another generation. I am not certain when they closed, replaced with an automated system (Maritel I think).
Also about 6 weeks ago we lost Herb, W1DEO, who founded Portland Marine Radio. Herb was 98 and was an active ham right up to the end. Great guy and will be missed. I could not locate anything on line about Portland Marine, but I did find a nice video for a British station that shows some typical daily activities of a maritime coastal station:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyXhVI5p1mwThey are all gone now, or mostly anyway. Gone by way of the Dodo bird. I was involved in the Camden operation for about 10 years, keeping the radios on air. Many a fisherman kept in touch with home, many times more than 100 miles off shore, with Camden Marine, who connected them to the telephone network. The radios were all GE Mastr series, with DC MASTR series remote controls. The transmitters were continuous duty, using the ubiquitous 5894 final. I think I only had one fail. The radios were located in a non air conditioned shack with only a fan.
The station manager, Helen, would ask me to drop in when she needed something ....perhaps the phone lines had some hum (a frequent problem) or some audio needed tweaking for a new headset. On a given summer morning she would have a dozen boats lined up when she opened for business at 0700 every morning. We had 2 sets of remotes in 2 homes, the other was in Marge's home. They split shifts to run the marine operator 24/7 and 365.
So here's a salute to Bill, Herb, Helen, Marge and all the radio ops who manned the airwaves for all those years.
Peter
