Night of nights, 2015

Every year, the Maritime Radio Historical Society celebrates the closing of the last commercial Morse code radio station, which happened at 0001 UTC, July 13, 1999.  They do this by re-manning the watch for a few hours in honor of all those who so diligently listened for distress signals on 500 KHz and other frequencies continuously for over 90 years.  Your humble author was one of those, who in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s strained to hear, through the static crashes and OTHR, the simple, yet effective combination of SOS sent in Morse code.
Fortunately, after the closure of KPH, the National Parks Service took over the land and preserved the buildings and antenna fields intact.  Today, a dedicated group of volunteers maintain these facilities as a working museum.  This is the earliest history of radio technology and from this, sprang Amateur Radio, then Broadcast Radio services.
So, if you have the opportunity on July 12 (Sunday, starting at 8 pm, EDT), tune around to some of the frequencies listed below and see how ship to shore communications was handled:

KPH	KFS	KSM	WLO	KLB	NMC	NMW	Ship transmit
426		426		488	472	448	425, 454, 468,480,512
500		500		500	500	500	500
			2055.5
4247			4343				4184
6477.5					6383		6276
8642		8438.3	8658	8582.5	8574		8368
12808.5	12695.5	12993	12992				12552
17016.8	17026	16914	16968.5		17220.5		16736
22477							22280.5

These are duplex frequencies, meaning; the ship transmits on one frequency and listens on to the shore station on another and vice versa.

Those medium frequencies do not carry that far during daylight, however the high frequencies should be heard across the world.

http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/2015/07/night-of-nights-2015/

http://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/events_nightofnights.htm
http://www.arrl.org/news/mrhs-night-of-nights-2015-set-for-july-12
http://w6sg.net/site/?p=1263
http://www.radiomarine.org/
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs149/1109843077277/archive/1121472370098.html

'73 Claudio IK1XPK.