[RTTY] First Air-to-Ground RTTY?

[Don Hill AA5AU]

The following is from Bill, W9EDE, who was one of my Elmers when I was
14 years old.  He sent this to me yesterday and I had no idea he was involved
with teletype.  As a RTTY enthusiast, I found it interesting reading as it could
possibly be the first air-to-ground RTTY operation.


> 
> In 1941, I was working for Indiana Bell as a teletype repairman.  I came 
> back to that Job after WWll and shortly after was promoted to Engineer, 
> designing telegraph circuits and teletypewriter applications. Early in the 
> 1950s, before you were born, there was an International Conference of 
> telephone people here in Indianapolis to resolve some of the problems of 
> providing telephone circuits for Business Machines.  Teletype Corp and Bell 
> Laboratories got together and developed a demonstration of air to ground 
> communications using teletypewriters, data sets, and radios.  The airborne 
> unit was a Model 30 Teletype, a very small unit that printed on tape.  I 
> was delegated to work with the Teletype and Labs people for any local 
> assistance they may have needed.  The ground station was a model 19 TTY, 
> operated by one of our training ladies.  They would take a few people at a 
> time for a short flight and let them pass small talk back and forth.  It 
> worked fine until they had a load of South Americans who spoke Spanish.
>    Our operator threw up her hands, but a couple of us saved the day by 
> remembering enough of our High School Spanish to pass the time of day.  So 
> far as I know, that was the first  air/ground RTTY contact.
> 
> Back in those days we had a lot of open wire, and it was a real challenge 
> to keep 40 WPM TTY circuits working.  The scientists at Bell Labs told us 
> that the maximum theoretical speed on a local loop was 30Kbaud, and then 
> only under ideal noise conditions.  How wrong they were.
> 

73, Don AA5AU