WSF 1963-1968

by Wendell Benson WW2G

I was an operator at WSF from Oct 1963 to Sep 1968. It was known as NY harbor

radio although we did more than communicate with nearby vessels.

Our transmitter was a Federal 2kW job. QTH was at 67 Broad St in lower

Manhattan. This was a building housing many ITT companies. In 1963 when

I started WSF was Mackay Radio which later became ITT World Communications.

In recent years they did away with 67 and now it is known as 75 Broad St.

The building had 33 stories plus more space above. Radio room was on the 4th

floor and the transmitter was near the roof top. The last years I was there the radioroom

had moved to the 33rd floor. WSF had a beautiful MCW signal on 500kc.

Most of our contacts seemed to be to the south of NY. Hours of operation

were 8am - midnite local time Mon thru Sat. Sun 10am-6pm. Located with

us was the Marine Bureau. Traffic that WSL received destined to NYC was routed

to us for phoning the customer, putting on TWX or ITT printer customers.

Outgoing traffic was phoned to our operator or put on direct printers to our

location. Messages incoming from customers were given to the radio operator

on duty who put a word check on the message, looked up the call sign, checked

Lloyds Register to see where in the world the ship was and if not in the

Atlantic the message was forwarded by direct printer to KFS.

In between doing this the radio operator worked as many ships as he could on 500. Many ships upon hearing the call on WSL traffic lists would call us because they knew

we probably had a copy of the message. In the fall/winter it was not unusual to work ships off Venezuela who had heard their call on the WSL list.

The top of our building didnt cover much area. The antenna was strung on

4 poles at the top of the bldg. In Sept 1968 the station was remoted to oprs at WSL. Rumors were that the operators were unhappy about wearing two hats. Effectively they

sent out the 2 traffic lists we had each day but I believe seldom actually

contacted anybody using the WSF call. They applied to the FCC to close

the station and that happened. At that point I transferred to the Worldcom

Technical Operating center on the 4th floor as a tech. The last 14 years

I spent as a Supvr retiring in 1988.