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 Previous: Boston Area Hams Provide Communications Support for Annual Marathon |  Next: The K7RA Solar Update |
Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
April 24, 2009
This week's Surfin' listens for the sound of "CQ" and other Morse coding in the movies.
In response to last week's exposé on the origins of the idiom CQ, Dennis Kidder, W6DQ, e-mailed me that the all-familiar "dahdidahdit dahdahdidah" was a recurring theme throughout the 2001 French film CQ.
According to The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), CQ is a story about "a young film maker who moves to Paris to make Sci-fi films." Awhile back, the film played on my television, while I was doing something else. I paid so little attention to the film that I missed the Morse code, as well as any connection between CQ and the film's plot. I plan to view the film again real soon now and pay closer attention to what is going on.
Over the years, the Morse code has made many film appearances, so much so that once upon a time, there was a Web site that chronicled the appearance of the code in hundreds of motion pictures, television shows, cartoons and commercials.
Robbie Burnet's "Morse Goes to the Movies" Web site fell off the face of the Internet a few years ago, but Jeerasak Pitiwatsakul, E20TCM, came to the rescue and archived Mr Burnet's handiwork on his Morse Code Web page. Not surprisingly, the code shows up in Westerns, war and spy flicks, but also appears in some unlikely places like comedies and romances. So you never know where you will encounter the code next.
UPDATE: Dennis Kidder, W6DQ, alerted me that the letters R-S-T are missing from E20TCM's rescue of the “Morse Goes to the Movies” Web site. A solution is to this omission is to visit the Archive.org's WayBack Machine, where you can view earlier archives of the Web site that include the whole alphabet.
Until next time, keep on surfin'!
Editor's note: To communicate with Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, save a tree and send him e-mail instead, or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin' is indexed here, so go look it up.
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