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s.
.!
tr.
Well,
the problem my
boss had
about the bound
volume of Ham News
is well
on its way to being
solved. At the time
this
column was
written
over two
hundred
of you had sent
in
"yes"
votes, and when
I
presented this evidence to the
boss he agreed
that
maybe
a
bound volume was
a
good idea. So, if every-
thing
goes along as
expected I'll
be
notifying you
soon
that
the bound volume
is
available. Those of you
who
sent
in
"yes" votes
will be
notified personally.
I
recently had the pleasure of addressing the
Evansville -Owensboro Section of the
Institute
of
Radio Engineers. My subject was the SSB Jr.
rig
described
in
this
issue of
the Ham News. D. E.
Norgaard, W2KUJ,
had also been
invited
to
talk to
this group, but
he was
unable to appear,
so
I
made
a
wire recording of
Don's talk and took it
along with me.
Whenever Don or
I
give
talks
on
single-sideband
we like
to
demonstrate inverted
speech, because it
is
so
easy to produce with SSB equipment.
As
you know
inverted speech
is
that
strange sounding stuff
that
you
hear
on
the short-wave bands
on
transoceanic
com-
munication systems. At least, inverted speech used
to
be used
a
great deal, although
now more
complicated
systems of scrambling are employed.
At any rate, you produce
inverted
speech by taking
an
upper sideband,
let us say, and placing it on the
low
frequency side of
a
carrier. This can
be
done
on a
receiver by tuning it
on
the high frequency
side of
a
so-called
upper sideband. The
effect
is
to make
low
pitched sounds high
in
pitch and
vice versa. You
should hear the wolf -whistle coming
through
on in-
verted
speech!
I
can
guarantee
that
you would never
recognize it.
In fact,
until
you become familiar with inverted
speech it
is
practically impossible to recognize any-
thing. For example,
if you say
"General Electric
Company" into
an
inverted speech system, what
comes
out sounds
like
"Gwunree Oyucktruck Krin-
kino." Conversely,
if you say
the
latter
phrase into
an
inverted
speech system, what comes out sounds like
"General Electric Company."
In other
words, you can form
a
new
language, and
if
you speak this new language into an inverted speech
system, what
comes
out
is
understandable English.
As
an example,
"metz
pee
wee" means
"nuts
to you"
and "eee wye" says "oh
yeah." But
you can
go
even
further,
as
Don and
I
did.
We
decided
that
it would
be nice to be able to
recite the poem Mary
Had
A
F
Little Lamb
in
inverted speech, and after an hour
of
intense concentration
we
succeeded
in
the decoding
job.
We
thought
you would like to
see
this
poem
in
"Sweeping the
Spectrum,"
so
here it is:
Naarow
hod
O
yutty
yarng,
Uts
feeious yiz
yelt
uz snee,
Arnd
I
view hair bop
naarow yump,
No yarng yiz sla pee bay.
A
word of
caution. When practising this
poem
in
inverted
speech language, make sure
that
you are
alone. People have
strange enough
ideas of
amateurs
as
it
is!
It
doesn't take
an
editor
of
a
magazine long to
realize
that
he has
a
bunch of sharp-eyed readers.
Even though
I
do know
this, every
so
often something
happens
that
makes
me realize
that
the Ham News
readers are product -conscious. For example, VE1WM
had
a
question
in
the September -October,
1950
Ham
News (page
5)
regarding radio interference from
fluorescent lamps.
I
answered the question
at
some
length, and referred to
a
home-made filter which
might
be
made, consisting of three
0.07
mf condensers
connected
in
delta.
Just
the other day
one of my readers wrote me, and
pointed out
that
two
manufacturing concerns make
just
such
a
special condenser,
that
is, a
single
unit
which contains three 0.07 mf delta -connected con-
densers. One such concern
is
Sprague Electric
Com-
pany, and their interference filter has the number
IF
-37.
This same person continues, and points out,
that
the other company making such filters
is
the General
Electric Company! Oh
well, looks like
I'll have
to
surround myself with more
G -E
catalogs. The
G
-E
unit,
by the way, carries the number 25F214.
The reason this issue of the
G -E
Ham News
feels
thicker
or
heavier
is
that
it contains twelve pages.
This
is
not
going to be
the standard
size of
the Ham
News from now on,
but
in
this
case, because of
the
SSB
Jr.
rig,
I
deemed it desirable to give as
much
in-
formation
as possible
on
this newest of amateur
de-
velopments.
It
is
possible
that
one or two issues
a
year
may
be
twelve pages long, if the material warrants
it.
--L'iyh
toserle
Jc 44,
1 1
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