WW-Sckitzo t1_iuc05d6 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 4:14 AM

Reply to comment by JustaOrdinaryDemiGod in ELI5: Morse code is made up of dots and dashes. How did telegraph operators keep from losing track of where one letter ended and another began? by copperdomebodhi

Who still uses it daily? Is it in certain industries still? I've had a few courses on it over the years but SOS is about all I can do was always interesting as hell to me.

JustaOrdinaryDemiGod t1_iucvwtd wrote on October 30, 2022 at 11:15 AM

>Who still uses it daily?

Amateur radio operators around the world. I know plenty of guys who never talk on the radio but do code daily. It's just a preference.

WW-Sckitzo t1_iuehenr wrote on October 30, 2022 at 6:41 PM

That's awesome, my entire life I thought it was a dead/dying skill set; had no idea it was still in common use. Thank you!

SierraTango501 t1_iuemfdr wrote on October 30, 2022 at 7:14 PM

Aviation still uses morse heavily in ground based navigation (VOR/NDB) identifiers.

Sedixodap t1_iufia6d wrote on October 30, 2022 at 10:50 PM

It's still pretty pervasive in the marine industry, however most of the time the letters don't matter so much as what they mean. I've forgotten half of the alphabet, and definitely couldn't translate a sentence from the flashing light the way I was trained to, but I encounter at least one of the various single letter codes just about every day on the water.

Racons (radar beacons) transmit an identifying letter that appears on our radar, letting us visually identify important points of land. For example I can easily distinguish the entrance to the Fraser River from the sandflats at Robert's Bank because they have different letters.

Flashing morse A lights are used on fairway buoys to mark safe water.

Flashing morse U lights are used on oil rigs to signal a danger.

Morse O is the emergency signal for a man overboard. Every crew member knows where to go and what to do immediately upon hearing that signal.

Different morse sound signals can be used to indicate you're turning to port, starboard, overtaking a vessel, moving astern, or concerned about what the other vessel is doing - given the prevalence of radios only the last two seem to be used regularly, but if someone wasn't responding on radio it gives me a way of letting the other ship know what I'm about to do.

Similarly, others are used as fog signals to indicate what type of vessel you are and what your status is (for example I can tell a normal power driven vessel from a tugboat or vessel restricted in its ability to manoeuver).

And as the aviation guy mentioned, we've got some aviation electronics on board transmits our identification code when we're doing helicopter operations as a backup to help them find us.