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We retire, move first to Daphne, Alabama, and then to Merritt Island, Florida

I served as Director of the Lockeed Huntsville Research and Engineering Center for 17 years. It had become apparent to me that I would never have the time to do the many things I wanted to do plus work, so I decided to take early retirement. In anticipation of that, we bought a home at Daphne, Alabama, on Mobile Bay. The property consisted of a rental home, a small guest home and the main home on a 4 acre lot with 300 feet of white sand beach on the bay. It had a long pier that ran out to a dock and a boathouse with lifts for two boats. We renovated and enlarged the home, which was on pilings, and we intended to retire and move there in January, 1980. However, the major hurricane Frederick with exceedingly high winds passed directly over the bay destroying the guest house and doing considerable damage to the other property. It completely destroyed the boathouse and dock, washed out the access road, and felled a few ancient oak trees. We needed time to restore the property, so my retirement was delayed until July 1, 1980.

Shortly before my retirement date, someone saw me placing a “For Sale” sign in our yard, and bought the home at the asking price. We had to move out quickly, so the day after my retirement, Peggy and I left for our home at Daphne. I hired a colored man to drive a large U-Haul truck towing a large trailer, and I drove our motor home that was towing our station wagon. Our boat River Flivver had been towed to Daphne on an earlier trip.

Almost immediately after moving into our home at Daphne, I decided to replace all of my old radio equipment except, of course, my old Hallicrafters S-20 receiver that I had bought in Atlanta in 1940 and had kept for nostalgic reasons. I ordered a Ten-Tec OMNI C transceiver with crystal filters and power supply. Also bought was a second separate VFO (variable frequency oscillator), an antenna tuner, an electronic keyer, and a MFJ Super Keyboard II to replace my old K4KN keyboard that had no memory. While waiting for the equipment to arrive, I installed between some trees a 10/20/40/80 meter trapped dipole antenna that was cut for the CW section of the bands. This was the first time since I became a ham that I had no home-built equipment, except for the Heathkit test equipment that I had built and still used. A microphone came with the transceiver, but it was never used.

The new transceiver worked like a charm, and it still does after 23 years. After I got back on the air from my Daphne QTH (station location), I began to spend a lot of time “working” (communicating with) my keyboard friends.

Shortly afterward, I became a charter member of the “CFO” (Chicken Fat Operators). Membership was by invitation after one proved the ability to maintain a QSO (contact) at a code speed of at least 45 words per minute. I understand that the “Chicken Fat” in the name came from the fact that in the old days one spoke of a real fast operator as one who must have lubricated their telegraph key with chicken fat. I had the honor of having my CFO qualification test given by Jim Ricks, W9TO, the founder of CFO, in a long QSO at a speed over 45 words per minute. I didn’t realize that I was being tested as the speed seemed normal for Jim, but after our QSO he informed he that I had passed the code speed test and that I would soon receive my CFO membership certificate. I still remember how happy and proud I was to receive it, and to become CFO #431. The membership in the CFO was mostly American amateurs, but there were some from foreign countries.

Jim Ricks is now deceased, and the CFO is part of Amateur Radio history. However, a few of the old members are still on the air. Jim lived near Chicago, but I had known him by amateur ham radio since right after WW-II when I got back on the air from the boarding house in Auburn. At that time, Jim was known for the excellent electronic keyer he had invented. When controlled by a “paddle”, his electronic keyer made both dots and dashes automatically without the use of relays. It was known as the TO keyer. Years later, when transistors became available, he designed a keyer that used transistors instead of vacuum tubes and named it the TTO keyer. Hallicrafters bought the rights to manufacture and sell that keyer. I had bought one of them soon after I moved to California and used it until I got my first keyboard..

Our Daphne home on the bay was a very nice place to live. The area was very historic. Mobile was just across the bay, and the Civil War battlefields of Spanish Fort and Blakeley were only a few miles north of Daphne. My grandfather, James S. Farrior Sr., had fought in both bloody battles. After Spanish Fort fell, he and the other survivors escaped to nearby Fort Blakeley, where most were killed or captured the next day. Fortunately, he was captured. On a day trip, we went to Ship Island off the coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, where my grandfather had been held prisoner at Ft. Massachusetts. Our granddaughter Jennifer was a small girl at the time and was visiting use, so we enjoyed having her along on the trip. She got her historical facts mixed up when she referred to the Civil War as the “Silverware War”. She had heard me tell how my great grandmother’s silverware had been buried during the civil war.

Although we liked the Bay Area very much, our plans were to improve the Daphne property, sell it, and then move to Merritt Island, Florida, which we did in mid 1981. Sue and Jack already lived there, and Jack was a manager at the Kennedy Space Center. Larry had obtained a Master’s degree from Florida State University, and he, Janis, and Jennifer were living in Orlando, which was a short drive from Merritt Island. Our home on Riviera Drive was on a canal with a view of the Banana River. We had a dock and boathouse and enjoyed boating in River Flivver. Our swimming pool was cleaned more than it was used, but it served as a nice reflecting pool.

From time to time I ran into my old aerospace acquaintances and we would talk about old times. From the yard of our home we could view the Shuttle launches, and were watching when the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded, killing the astronauts.

Upon our arrival, I wasted no time installing my Ten-Tec rig and a 160 meter thru 10 meter vertical antenna. I joined the local amateur radio club and participated in the meetings. There were a number of members who had been radio amateurs for many years, and who remembered amateur radio as it was when most amateurs built their own equipment. In 1983, after getting my first computer, an Apple II, I acquired a 2 meter transceiver and antenna so that I could experiment with the digital mode named “Packet”. It did some amazing things, but I liked telegraphy much more.

Soon after I got the computer, I got the Magic Window word processor. I studied Basic programming, and soon programmed the first version of “The Mill”, a computer program that teaches both American Morse and International Morse. A much improved PC version is still popular and is available as a free download on my Web Site.

When Sue and Jack moved to Fernandina Beach, on Amelia Island, we went to visit them and found that it was a far better place to live than Merritt Island. We also had missed them after they had moved. We bought a home on a golf course in the “Plantation”, an up-scale housing development, and moved there in September of 1990. The house had two upstairs rooms, and I claimed a bedroom for my radio shack and computer room. There was no convenient way I could set up a darkroom. After a few weeks I was back on the air talking with some of my old friends using telegraphy. By that time, many of my oldest amateur friends had died, or were no longer active radio amateurs. After living in that home for a couple of years, we decided to get back on the water. We bought a beautiful marsh lot in “Plantation Point”, just north of “The Plantation”, and I designed and built the home in which we now live.

While Jennifer was still young, Jan and Larry had moved to Oyster Bay, on the Gulf Coast south of Tallahassee, where they enjoyed coastal living. Both Jan and Larry worked in Tallahassee. Larry was a biologist with the State of Florida, and Jan worked at a large hospital, where she was in charge of the medical labs.

On Nov. 11, 1995, Jennifer married Thomas Petrandis, the son of a very successful sea-food restaurant owner. Jennifer is now the business manager of the restaurant, and Thomas is the head chef. He also manages the Petrandis commercial fishing business. On March 18, 1997, Peggy and I were made great grandparents when their daughter Marina was born. On March 20, 2003, their second daughter, Savannah was born.

I begin my mini-career as an archaeologist

Archaeology had been a hobby with me for many years, and I had served as the Vice President of the Alabama Archaeological Society and President of the Madison County Chapter. After my retirement, I began digging in Central America. I dug at Colha (Belize) 1983; Copan (Honduras) 1984; Tikal (Guatemala) 1985; Rio Azul (Guatemala) 1985; 1986, 1987; Caracol (Belize) 1988; Kinal (Guatemala) 1990, 1991, Rio Bravo (Belize) 1993, 1994. I dug primarily with an archaeological team from the University of Texas (San Antonio}. Dr. Richard .E.W. Adams, a noted Maya archaeologist was the Project Director, and for several seasons I assisted Jack Eaton, a noted Maya Archaeologist and explorer. The digs were six weeks to three months in length, and most of them were deep in the jungle. In northern Guatemala at the Mayan sites of Rio Azul and Kinal, our camp was at an old chiclero camp site known as Ixcanrio.

The Jungle Telegraph Office

We lived in tents, and there was a radio/medical tent that I shared with the project physician, Dr. Edward Westphal. I would take with me a small amateur radio station in a small aluminum case that would fit under the seat in the airplane. Reliable daily communications were always maintained with several amateur radio stations in the United States. In Guatemala, we called our radio net the “Rio Azul Net” (RAN). The most active members of the net were Marty Morrison (NS5H), Orton Duggan (W4EQE), Frank Cicogna (N8GDO), and Ron Wiesan (WD8PNL). I was licensed to use the call W4FOK/TG, where the /TG indicates Guatemala. All of them were excellent telegraph operators who handled the radio traffic in a professional manner.

Every evening after returning to camp very hungry, tired, and dirty, I would quickly shower and then prepare messages for transmission. I was allowed to shower first so that I could go to the radio shack. My goal was to get the traffic cleared before supper was called. Not getting into the chow line promptly could cause me not to get my share of the beans and tortillas. That was very serious business!
T
he Jungle Radio Station - This photo shows me in the radio/medical tent at our Ixcanrio camp deep in the Guatemalan jungle.

At my right, in the photo, is my small 20 watt Ten-Tec Century 22 CW transceiver. It performed remarkably well in both receiving and transmitting. The small antenna tuner is on top of the transceiver, but can’t be seen because it is black. Although I often used a keyer paddle in conjunction with the transceiver’s built-in electronic keyer, I preferred using the MFJ Super Keyboard II because I could store messages in it before the schedule began. The simple antenna, which was supported between a pole and a tree, was a single-wire fed off-center Hertz, known as a Windom, cut for 80 meters, but it also worked equally well on 40 and 20 meters. This made it possible to move to another band if conditions on one band deteriorated. At no time was communication impossible. Such reliability would have been impossible using telephony.

Since a primary subject of this small book is Amateur Radio and telegraphy (CW), it seems appropriate to include the following account of how Amateur Radio, using telegraphy, played an important role in an emergency situation.
Telegraphy in Action”. by Jim Farrior, W4FOK

(Published in the British publication "Morsum Magnificat", Number 54, Oct.1997. A Spanish translation was published in a Mexico City Radio Amateur journal.)

For a number of years I took a small amateur radio rig with me into the jungles of Central America, where I participated in archaeological digs. My amateur radio call, W4FOK, was issued in 1938, and I was licensed as W4FOK/TG in Guatemala, and as W4FOK/V3 in Belize. My little rig, a Ten-Tec Century 22, has an output of only 20 watts, and no voice capability. The transceiver, keyboard, keyer paddle, a.c. power supply, antenna tuner, 20/40/80 meter antenna system, tools, manuals, and spare parts, all fit in a small case which was carried aboard the aircraft. In each year of jungle operation, approximately 100 messages were handled by radio amateur volunteers in various parts of the U.S. Notably among those who nearly always met the regular evening schedule were W4EQE, NS5H, WD8PNL, N8GDO, and W9CN. Often there were others. Most of the messages handled were personal messages for the staff, but a number dealt with emergencies, mostly medical. All were handled promptly and accurately, and this could not have been done using voice due to the low power, the primitive antenna, and the congested state of the amateur radio bands.



Urgent Traffic by CW

In Guatemala, our camp was in the extremely remote, uninhabited north eastern corner of the Peten near a large Maya archaeological site known as Rio Azul. In 1986, when digging at Rio Azul, we found a Maya tomb just as we were closing the season. Had it not been for the radio, we would have had to back fill the extensive excavation without clearing the tomb, with a strong possibility that it would have been looted before the next season. However, in less than three hours after finding the tomb, by using our CW communications link, we had sent a message to the National Geographic Society's headquarters in Washington, D.C., and had received a reply authorizing funding for another week's work to clear the tomb. In 1987, we had a severe malaria epidemic at Rio Azul. Medical advice was obtained through an exchange of messages with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. A radio message was also sent to San Antonio, Texas, requesting that the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala be contacted and that arrangements be made for medical assistance. As a result, two days later, a doctor and a nurse arrived with medical supplies after a very difficult trip through the jungle.



Deadly Snakebite

In 1990, we dug at Kinal, another large Maya site 10 km from our Rio Azul camp. The dry season had not arrived, and we were spending up to six hours of the work day traveling through the muddy jungle between our camp and the work site. On March 12th, a little after 4 p.m., while he was cutting palm thatch for the camp buildings, a young Guatemalan native workman, Victor Medrani, was bitten on the lower right leg by a huge snake. A fellow workman killed the snake with his machete and ran at top speed to the camp bringing the snake with him. Dr. Dick Adams, the project director from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and I were the only staff in camp at the time, and we saw immediately that the snake was the dreaded Fer de Lance. Bites from this snake are often fatal, even with the best medical treatment. We grabbed the snake bite kit, climbed in the small four-wheel drive pickup and headed down the muddy jungle road. Victor, who had been left in the jungle beside the road was already very ill, in pain and bleeding from the mouth and eyes. Dick immediately injected the anti-venom we had brought, but back at camp, Victor's condition quickly worsened, and we had soon used all of the remaining anti-venom.



Call for Help

While others tended to Victor, Dick and I met in the radio tent to decide what might be the best course of action. It was clear that Victor would die if we could not get him to a hospital quickly, and our best chance was to use the radio to try to get a helicopter to pick him up. However, this would have to be done working through a U.S. radio contact, despite the difficulties often experienced in getting a telephone call through to Guatemala from the USA. It was time for the normal 5 pm radio schedule, and, as usual, Marty Morrison, NS5H, who lives in San Antonio, was on the job. She is a fine telegrapher, who sends fast beautiful code on a bug, and she normally handled all of our traffic for the San Antonio area. Through her, we sent a message to Dick Gill, a friend of the project who lives in Austin and San Antonio, requesting that he call the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala and try to make arrangements for a helicopter to pick up Victor from a cleared area near the camp. By 5:30 Gill had been located with the help of Jane Adams, Dick's wife, and he placed a call immediately. The telephone service between San Antonio and Guatemala City was working much better than usual, and the necessary contacts were quickly made. It then took an hour and a half for the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City to determine that the Guatemalan military would not take their helicopter into the jungle at night, and no other alternatives were available, probably not even the next day.



Request for Medical Team

Upon receiving that information at 7:10 pm, we asked Marty, by CW, to ask Gill, who speaks fluent Spanish, to call the Fire Chief in Santa Elena, a small town on the edge of the jungle, to arrange for medics to depart Santa Elena as soon as possible with the necessary anti-venom, antibiotics, etc., to treat the patient. We would leave the camp shortly, and hopefully would meet the medics about half way, where they could begin treating Victor. Luck was again with us. It normally took a long time, hours and sometimes days, to get a call through from the U.S. to Santa Elena, but miraculously, the call went through immediately. At 7:25, Marty, back on the key, told us that the Fire Chief had agreed to help. However, he had no anti-venom, and no money to buy it. Through the CW link with Marty, and the telephone link to the Chief, we asked him to get the money from the Project's Guatemalan agent, Edmundo Solis, who lived in Santa Elena. We also suggested they take Edmundo and use his truck, as he was familiar with the jungle road and his vehicle was well suited to jungle travel.


Help On The Way

Marty was asked to pass along the information that our trucks would depart camp within the hour. Gill confirmed that he had made the necessary requests, but he could get no confirmation from Guatemala on the action taken until the following morning. The excellent telephone service we had experienced for a short while had returned to its normal bad condition. Fortunately, however, the medical team had been quickly assembled, the pharmacist located, and the needed supplies obtained. Because of the rain, however, their chances, and ours, of getting through the dark jungle and making a rendezvous that night were poor.



Medicine Man

At the camp, Victor was clearly very sick, and screaming with pain and fear. We had used all the drugs and other medications that could help, and the workmen were now insisting that one of their number, a medicine man, should be allowed to administer to him. He wanted to brush Victor's body with branches from certain shrubs, to lay leaves from certain plants on his leg, and have him drink a concoction made from jungle plants. What they wanted to do seemed to be rather harmless, especially in view of the situation that would have existed if their request had been denied and Victor had died. Remarkably, this treatment seemed to calm Victor down a bit, but he was still in agony, and everyone including him, I'm sure, felt he had little chance of surviving.



"Vaya con Dios"

A litter was made for Victor in a small four-wheel-drive van. Other trucks carried workmen with flashlights, machetes, a chain saw, shovels, cables, extra fuel, and other things they would need to force their way through the jungle. Everyone said "Vaya con Dios" to Victor, who groaned "gracias", and at 8 p.m. the convoy left camp. For half an hour, the sound of their engines could be heard as they struggled through the muddy jungle. Although Victor was wedged into his litter, we knew he was being bumped, jolted, and thrown about, and that this would continue for many hours. Marty was still on the radio, so I thanked her, Jane, and Gill for the tremendous job they had done. She said that they would continue trying to get through to Santa Elena to find out what had happened. In the meantime, there was nothing that we could do, so we arranged to contact them the next morning at 7 am on 20 meters. At 7 am Marty's signal was clear and strong, and she reported that Gill had finally received word that the team from Santa Elena had started out. At 8 am and again at 9 am, she reported that they had had no further luck in getting through to Santa Elena. The phone service had now returned to its normal state.



Dig Terminated

Two days later, at our normal CW schedule, Marty said that she had received a confusing report from Santa Elena. Apparently the patient had had his leg amputated, but attempts to verify that report had failed so far. The next day our team arrived back in camp with stories of their difficult trip but also some good news. Victor had survived the trip and had responded to the treatment. The report we had received related to another snake bite victim in the hospital. The scheme to meet halfway almost failed because the two teams were traveling on separate, parallel detours, and would have passed each other if one man had not by chance spotted a headlight through the jungle. Edmundo told me later that without the wireless telegraph to set up the jungle rendezvous with the medics, there was little chance that Victor would have arrived at the hospital alive. Because of the costs associated with Victor's hospital treatment, Dr. Adams decided to terminate the dig at Easter; and when we left the jungle at that time, we spent the night in Santa Elena.



Urgent Transfer

We fully expected that Victor would be well, or nearly so, and were shocked to find him very near death. He had had several operations to remove infections from his stomach, intestines, and elsewhere, and just prior to our arrival, his kidneys had failed. His leg was a mass of infection. The poorly equipped hospital had run out of antibiotics, and had not been able to handle the situation. Dr. Adams immediately decided that we must try to transfer Victor by air ambulance to a modern hospital in Guatemala City. Over objections by his family, and also by the local hospital who demanded that Victor's bill be paid immediately, Dr. Adams began making arrangements. It was already after dark, the bank was closed, and the small airport had shut down for the night. However, Dick had friends locally, and at the hospital in Guatemala, who helped him make arrangements for an air ambulance and for the airport to re-open. The Fire Chief who had come to our aid before, agreed to transport Victor from the hospital to the airport. Although the hospital was assured that they would be quickly paid, Victor's leaving was more like an abduction than a dismissal.



Leg Amputated

When Victor arrived at the hospital in Guatemala City his heart and lungs stopped, and he had to be revived and placed on life support systems, including kidney dialysis. In spite of his general condition, the doctors decided that his leg had to be amputated immediately if he were to have any chance of surviving. When I left Guatemala City a week later, he was out of danger, and would soon be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital. When he recovered, he returned to Santa Elena on crutches, and Dick arranged for him to be paid his normal wage for the remainder of the year. The next year, 1991, Victor was back at camp. He was in good spirits, looking healthy, and using crutches. His muscular appearance indicated that he had not been idle. When offered a job washing artifacts in camp, he asked for a "man's job". In 1992, still without a prosthesis, he showed an amazing ability to do hard work. I learned that arrangements had been made for Victor to be fitted with an artificial leg. Our project moved the next year to the Rio Bravo area in Belize. I suppose I will never hear of Victor again, but I will always wonder how he made out. Although Victor lost a leg, his life was saved, and Morse telegraphy played an important part in making that possible. Let's not ring down the curtain on telegraphy. It still lives! End of the article.

My computer program, “The Mill”, which is a free download from my Web Page, contains a simulation of all of the messages that were sent and received in connection with the above emergency event. To increase the realism of the simulation, each station is given a different CW “note”, and each operator is given a different “fist”. The Web Page URL is: <http://www.home.comcast.net/~w4fok>
Conclusion

Now (2005), I am 85 years old and still have my original amateur radio call, W4FOK. “The Mill” is still popular among radio amateurs around the world. The program is also used in a number of railroad museums in the U.S. and Canada to send American Morse code railroad messages, and in connection with railroad and telegraph office exhibits. Older people find the sound of the sounder to be very nostalgic, and younger people are amazed that the sound can be “read” by a telegraph operator. A maritime museum in England uses the program to send nautical messages in International Morse Code, including a complete simulation of the distress messages related to the Titanic disaster.

Some amateur radio operators reading my book may wonder why I haven’t mentioned more about the many different facets of Amateur Radio operating. I’ve briefly tried much of it, but found that for me designing and building equipment and CW QSOing were always the most rewarding. Part of the attraction of Amateur Radio is that there are so many different ways that one can participate. Some like designing and building their equipment, experimenting with antennas, using various modes of operation, mobile or marine operation, handheld operation, Field Days, etc. Personally, I think that it is sad that there are fewer code users and most do not build any of their equipment.

See the photo on the following page.



One nice thing about writing a book is that one can put in it whatever one chooses. Although not directly related to the subject matter, I could not end this book without presenting the following photo of Peggy and me with all of our descendants. Our daughter Sue lives near us on Amelia Island with her husband, Jack Harden. Our daughter Janis lives with her husband, Larry Nall, and they and their descendants live on the Gulf coast south of Tallahassee. The photo below was taken at our home on the marsh in Plantation Point. The panoramic view of the marsh and the Intracoastal Waterway from this room is both beautiful and interesting.





Our 2003 Family Photo - Peggy and me with all of our descendants. Left to right on the sofa: Jim Farrior, Marina Petrandis (age 6), Peggy Farrior, Sue Farrior Harden, Janis Farrior Nall. On Floor: Jennifer Nall Petrandis holds Savannah Petrandis (age 4 months). Janis is Jennifer’s mother. Marina and Savannah are Jennifer’s daughters. This photo was taken July 22, 2003, by my son-in-law Jack Harden using my new digital camera.
The END

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