Morse Code Mill Copy 

 G. Johanson, WD4NKA

 

 

 

The CW Position at WD4NKA

 

There are three positions at WD4NKA, an AM Phone position, a Digital position, and a position for Morse Code, which in the world of radio is called "Continuous Wave" or "cw".  CW is probably the most historic mode in use, over all.  I thought I might give you a little tour of the station.

 

Central to the code position is what is called a "Mill", which is essentially a typwriter.  But this is no ordinary typewriter.  For one thing, it types only upper case.  Caps.  Unlike most typewriters, it has a key for the "1" digit, and a "slash" for the zero digit.  In the case of mills used by the military during World War 2, the zero was represented by a "slash-zed" or "Slash Zero".   The "slash zero" was used to distinguish the "O" from the "0".  Since most military code took the form of traffic handling, this was an important feature.  In my case, my mill was used for railroad landline American Morse, which required a slightly different key set-up.

 

My current mill is a 1910 Remington Model 20, produced (we think) for Seaboard Coast Line Railway.  You will notice that it does have the number 1 key, and it is all caps.  The zero is represented by a diagonal slash.  In fact, it is the same slash used by Underwood for their U.S. Navy mill slash-zero, but mine.... doesn't have the zero.  Only the slash.  Why?

 

Well, for one thing, they were not handling the same sort of traffic the military was handling during WW2.  Most of what the code ops at the station and on rail were handling were signals and telegrams.  As well, billing.  Also, the landline code for zero was a lengthened "dah", unlike the International Wireless Morse, which is five dahs.  Just one long "dahhhhh".  

 

The rail mills usually did not have commas, "?" or "!", because they were not commonly used for rail traffic, and when they were, each of these characters cost the telegram recipient the equivalent of a five letter word, and back then, you paid for each letter sent.  SCL decided to omit both of these characters from their mills.

 

My mill typed the rail-line telegram, and also the billing for it.  As such, there is a "$".   No "cent" sign, because the telegrams were even dollars.  Which in 1910 meant a good chunk of money for a two line telegram.  I think my particular mill did station work, not on the rolling cars.

 

I use this 60 lb iron and steel beastie for radio code.  It.... works.  I just leave a space for commas (or I'll just use the small dash), question marks and exclamation marks.  I use the small dash for most punctuation I do not have on my mill.

 

Using the Mill.

Mill copy differs from regular "head" copy in that it is actually a form of "touch typing".  Only, instead of using your eyes to scan and type copy, you use your ears.  You are not interpreting what you are typing as much as you are auto-responding to a received stimulae.  In visual touch typing, you never look at your copy, only what you are copying, a letter, a brief, or dictation.  In mill copy you are auto-responding to the character heard over the headset, or "phones" or "cans".  A good mill op can actually carry on a conversation with someone, or listen to the radio, or something entirely catching their attention, but the fingers keep on typing automatically.  If ever there was "automatic writing", it is Mill Copy.  As such, it might seem to run counter-intuitive to what ops are striving for today: to form in their heads what is being sent, and to develop a "buffer", so as to lag 5 or 10 letters behind.  Lagging with the mill is generally about 3-5 characters, enough to hit the carriage return.

 

So what is the advantage of the Mill?  Largely, it is principally geared toward traffic handling.  The Mill produces "letter copy".  This is why a "count" is given when handling traffic.  The "count" is the number of actual letters copied. Notice that Handlers do not deal with "word count", it is "Letter Count" that is important, when spot accuracy is desired.  A trained mill op does not "copy ahead" or presume the word, because he or she isn't listening for a word.  Only auto-response to a character.

 

Usually, top speed for hand written copy settles around 20-25 wpm.  You can only write down letters so fast.  Even the military single-stroke characters can only be transcribed as fast as the hand that writes it.  Typing however, can take copy well, well beyond 40 wpm.  Even beyond most press speeds.  I can touch type about 70 wpm less than three errors, and 40 wpm error free.  One day, my code response may get that high. Who knows? But it's a goal, anyway. 

 

Now, this puts a burden on the one sending traffic: proper word spacing.  You cannot do sloppy key-work. Some folks send like they are tripping over logs in a forest in the middle of the night!!  They run words together, their sentence and word spacing is attrocious.  The Mill Op is listening for the word spacing and sentence spacing!  Which means the code sent must be something like proportionately accurate, something I find many folks on the air have a hard time with.  With head copy, where you are listening to the sound of an actual word, or letter group (ing, th, ed, &c) ,  bad word spacing can usually  get by.  Not so when sending traffic to a Mill op!  The sender must be as meticulous as the op doing the copy.

 

Bugs do have an advantage, historically, in that the dahs are just a bit longer with most fists, by proportion to the dits.  Bugs tend to have a swing that works with mill copy.  Automatic keyers, of course, are spot on accurate.  I myself use an old T.O. Keyer made by Hallicrafters, called the model HA-1.  She feels like a bug, only with automatically repeating dahs, so it has to be gotten used to.  I myself am still "on the curve".  With the Bug, I am about 20 wpm, on the HA-1, I drop her to 13 - 15 wpm... for now.  Of course I love my "8-amp" RAF straight key.  Her name is Blizen.  She worked traffic during the London Blitz.

 

You could say that with Mill Copy, the op becomes sort of a human teletype receiver, after a fashion.

 

 

 Learning the Mill

Very little is out there regarding the operation of the Mill, or the protocol thereof.  I can share how I myself got into it.  First of all, I learnt standard Touch Typing in High School, which helped immensely.  Mill and TT are operationally, exactly the same. Hold your fingers over the a-s-d-f / j-k-l-; (we call the semicolon "sem"). That is your resting position.  All the other keys are reached by the fingers closest.  When I took typing in High School, we had a manual that takes you through drills, teaching the most efficient "reaches" for each finger.  These Touch Typing manuals can be gotten on eBay, in yard sales, and from time to time, even on swap tables.  Once you have your typing skills well under way, begin to listen to slow code.  Under 10 wpm would be great.  Be patient with yourself.  You are learning code the same way as if you were writing it down, only you are training your brain and fingers to automatically, without though or hesitation to strike the "e" when you hear the "dit", and to strike the "c" when you hear "dah-di-dah-dit".  Once you are comfortable at 5 wpm, go higher.  Always try to copy just beyond your ability.  Do not be afraid to skip letters.  Do not be afraid to place spaces in the wrong place, or leave them out entirely.  You will "get it" in time.  You will find your typing speed with increase along with your copy speed.  Be kind to yourself.  Above all, do not let mistakes throw you.  Blow them off, plough through.  That is the toughest thing to get used to... dropping a letter.  You will be surprised how well you can read your copy, when you are done with the session, even though you may have dropped ten letters!!  In time, you will achieve fewer and fewer errors.  

 

I did "sessions" with my Drake 2A.  I never went longer than 30 minutes, and often, just 15 minutes.  Don't "over practice".  Keep it fun.  Remember, you are learning a classic skill that NOBODY teaches today.  You are learning a different discipline than most learning cw.  In fact, some will look at you like you had two heads when you get in a conversation about mill work.  It is counter-intuitive these days, where the popular mode of thought is to learn Morse like a language... which is cool.  But it isn't letter-accurate mill copy that looks straight up awesome when you pull the copy from the carriage.  In fact, I save a few of my QSOs for posterity.... or just fun reading years from now.

 

If you ever get into Traffic Handling on cw, you will see the mill tradition in certain pro-sines, like AA or AB (All After or All Before a certain point in the copy.   All After 35 or All Before 70, the number being the character number.)

 

Mill Copy is a dying skill.  It was considered a professional skill.  The Southern School of Telegraphy taught it because a station op who could use a mill got 30% more per hour on their paychecks than those who did hand copy.  A good Mill Op could make 50 bucks a week in 1913!!  That has the purchasing power of 1000 dollars today!  Oh, and if you made Station Master, you made crazy bucks.  By Federal Mandate you were limited to an 8-hour work-day for safety reasons.  You had free transit on the Railroad that employed you, and also it's connections.  You also had medical insurance.  Code operations, especially Mill Code, was an amazing growth-industry as well.

 

At some point I will post a blog entry covering the Southern School of Telegraphy in Newnan, GA.  An amazingly revealing narrative of the State of the telegraphic art, and the technology then employed. 

 

Here are some shots of the CW position at WD4NKA, the Mill, the HA-1, my Lightning Bug presentation, and some of the rigs used for cw, and for my only real voice mode, AM. 

 

 

 

 

This is the Remington Model 20, with the "bug".

 

 

This is a close-up of the mill keyboard. 

 

 

This is the "T.O. Keyer", the Hallicrafters HA-1, along with the Vibroplex keyer, which makes the whole system feel amazingly like a bug.... only with automatically repeating "dahs". 

 

 

 

 These are some of the other rigs used for both cw and AM voice.  At the end are two "flat face" Hammarlunds, an HQ-129-x "red letter" edition, c. 1946, and an HQ-140-x, c. 1955.  On 40 meters I do "diversity reception" copy, the IC7300 is connected to a roof mounted vertical ground plane, and the IC740 is connected to a horizontal dipole.  I synch the two receivers.  It's amazing how polarity not only makes a difference, but also how the polarity "rolls" from vertical to horizontal.  Most hear this as fading, or QSB.  I just hear the signal shift from one receiver to the other.  Fascinating.

 

 

 

 This is the AM position, a 1956 Johnson Ranger, and on top, a Hammarlund SP-600-jx.  The rack is actually a shelf unit, so the SP-600 never sees the heat of the transmitter below, which has powered ventilation.  The speaker on top is a 1946 RME, using an 8" Utah.  Great fidelity!

 

 

 

And of course, my "digital position".  Not a huge fan of FT8, I typically listen out for K2K mode operation (Keyboard to Keyboard)... which is getting pretty sparse these days. 

 

This is an example of actual mill copy.  Those slashes are zeros.  For a 116 year old machine, she keeps good account for herself.  All 65 lbs of her!

 

 

 That's about it for this installment. Oh, and in case you are thinking "where can I find a mill?", well... they are pretty expensive these days.  A Navy Underwood from 1941, in great shape, can fetch $500 to $1000 these days.  But you don't really have to have an actual Navy Underwood or a 1910 Remington Model 20.  Any typewriter will do.  BTW, some commercial mills did NOT have the slash-zero, btw.  Remember, aside from the number 1 and the zero, whether slash or slash-zero, all the rest of the keys are identical to any typewriter out there.  The guys I knew as a novice who did mill copy used a regular Royal Quiet Writer or 440 office.  And those can still be had, in great shape, for under $100.  The ONLY reason why I am hunting a pristine Navy Underwood is for authenticity.  My station is a Micro-Museum.

 

VY 73 ES GBY - DE WD4NKA AR K

 

dit dit 

 

(GBY was the code for God Bless You sent through the walls of the Hanoi Hilton, using a piece of glass or a nail or whatever the inmates could find.  It was sent from on inmate to another as a moral booster.  I use it in honour of our POWs held prisoner there under horrendous conditions.)