SOS and Easter

[Donnie]

I want to personally wish everyone a best Easter weekend and especially Easter Day as it is a special day.

Yes, I named SOS to stand for Ships of Scale. But it wasn't until I did that sometime later is when I realized that SOS is also used for the Distress call for maritime.

SOS is the International Morse code distress signal This distress signal was first adopted by the German government in radio regulations effective April 1, 1905, and became the worldwide standard under the second International Radiotelegraphic Convention, which was signed on November 3, 1906, and became effective on July 1, 1908. SOS remained the maritime radio distress signal until 1999, when it was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System.[1] SOS is still recognized as a visual distress signal.[2]

The SOS distress signal is a continuous sequence of three dits, three dahs, and three dits, all run together without letter spacing. In International Morse Code, three dits form the letter S, and three dahs make the letter O, so "SOS" became an easy way to remember the order of the dits and dahs. In modern terminology, SOS is a Morse "procedural signal" or "prosign",[3] and the formal way to write it is with a bar above the letters: SOS.

In popular usage, SOS became associated with such phrases as "Save Our Ship" or "Send Out Succour" or "Save our Souls". SOS is only one of several ways that the combination could have been written; VTB, for example, would produce exactly the same sound, but SOS was chosen to describe this combination. SOS is the only nine-element signal in Morse code, making it more easily recognizable, as no other symbol uses more than eight elements.

For this Easter, and for Ships of Scale, I want SOS to share the meaning with "Save our Souls".

Donnie

 

[GemmaJF]

Happy Easter Donnie and all on SOS.

 

[Aussie048]

Donnie

Happy Easter to all. Please stay safe especially on our roads.

May the members who are staying at home manage to get some time spent on there models

"Save our Souls"

Geoff

 

[shipbuilder]

Happy Easter everyone. SOS was first used by Titanic in 1912!
I sent the last one out in morse code from a passenger liner on the open ocean using morse code on Halloween night, 1984. Fire in the engine-room. The satellite would not work because the gyro compass stopped when we lost the power. When the emergency generator came on, the gyro was unstable and wandering, and could not keep the dish on the satellite. After tuning in the powerful main transmitter, the emergency generator choked on the smoke and stopped, plunging us into darkness again. My final option was the emergency transmitter, powered by two banks of 24 Volt batteries on top of the bridge. It was 2230 at night. I first sent the alarm signal, 12 four second dashes, eache separated by one second, to set auto alarms off on ships in the vicinity. Then I sent out then distress call: SOS SOS SOS de GXUY GXUY GXUY, RMS St. Helena, passenger liner, position ............... Fire in engine-room, preparing to abandon ship, request immediate assistance! I had to keep the speed down to 12 words a minute, to give other ships a better chance of getting it, although I really felt like bashing away at 25 words per minute! :lol: The moment I finished, I heard a very loud tuning note from large oil tanker Overseas Argonaut, 25 miles away who advised me that they had altered course, and would be with us in less than two hours. Our boats were swung out with all the passengers and most of the crew in them. Smoke everywhere. The fire was contained by flooding the engine-room with CO2 gas. At about midnight, I went out onto the bridge where the captain, chief engineer, chief officer and electrical officer were standing. I advised them that the tanker was in the vicinity and would fire a flare. Someone in the port boat shouted up to the bridge to find out if help was on the way. The captain said to me "you got it, go ahead and tell them" I shouted down that a tanker would be here shortly. At that very moment, there was a bang and a whoosh and a brilliant white flare shot up out of the darkness on our port bow, followed by our own answering flare, and cheering crew and passengers. We did not need to abandon ship, but were listing heavily with all the water that had been pumped in. We still burned for 24 hours with the tanker standing by. The remained with us for three days until we were sure the fire was out and the German salvage tug Fairplay IX was on the way. After cthey found us, the tow to Dakar, West Africa took one week. The passengers, mostly Americans were thrilled by it all and didn't want to leaev in dakar, but they had to. It took a full month to reapir us, and then we sailed south for cape Town again, and resumed our normal service!

Shortly after, morse became obsolete at sea, and so did radio officers. It is all satellite and voice now, but but we couldn't have done without morse that night! :handgestures-thumbup:

But, then again, they say nothing exciting ever happens at sea in merchant ships! :lol: :greetings-waveyellow:

Bob

 

[zoly99sask]

Happy Easter to everyone!!