Modifications by Joe Gurr
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Details in letter to Goerner?
Mike Everette, 7 September 2000 Forum.
Joe Gurr could have very easily made the necessary mods to the radio to jumper the switch function and therefore keep the radio in "Phone" mode. But! Here is a reason why he would NOT have done so, and one that raises credibility issues.
Gurr was trying to "help" AE (yeah, right)preserve her transmitting capability on 500 KHz, by reconfiguring the dorsal antenna to serve on 500 instead of using the much more efficient trailing wire. AE apparently wanted the trailing wire removed, and radio operation simplified, after Harry Manning bolted from the second flight attempt... Manning was to have been the radio operator, and one of his jobs would be to manually reel out and in the trailing wire (as well as to throw the antenna selector switch, located in the aft section).
So, AE knew (we believe) that she needed to preserve the 500 KHz capability. In those days, 500, or "600-meters" (wave length) was the only emergency universally guarded by ships.... and she would be over water quite a bit.
NOBODY used voice on 500! It was then, and continued so until the mid 90s when the regulation requiring ships to guard it was phased out, a CW frequency only. Even Joe Gurr would have known this. He would have come on very strong to AE, I think, about this and the necessity for keeping her CW key.
No one monitoring 500 would have been listening for/expecting a voice signal on 500.
HOWEVER, was AE so strongheaded that she disdained all Gurr’s (and others) expert advice? Could have been. Very likely. ("I don’t care...")
If Joe Gurr had that key I for one would like to know what happened to it. What happened to Gurr’s estate? Did he have heirs? Or was the contents of his house trashed, like I saw happen to the stuff of a recently deceased old time Ham in Durham, NC last month? Wonder if that key has ever turned up at a Hamfest someplace? Wonder if the person who has it now is aware of its origin and significance (and value)?