fly-boy,
While you're borrowing avionics text books from the tecchies ask them how they pick their frequencies for testing and the effects of the season and sunspots on the ionosphere and thus on the range obtained from the various frequencies.
Gaunty,
Come of it mate, when you had your flying washing line you also had a Radio Operator to wind it in and out for you. And he usually used CW to transmit because morsing worked better with the carrier wave included.
By the way, did you ever use the HF aerial to fly low level back across the North sea after a night of keeping Jerry awake? You know, the old trick of trailing the end in the wave tops and have the rear gunner call out "climb" if the wake became steady and "dive" if it stopped altogether?
Back to the subject - when I was hands-on and had to test an HF after fixing it down on the line, I'd get the best frequency from the handy frequency chart kept in the Jeppeson Nav Bag behind the Captain's seat. All the recommended numbers were there and updated to account for the current season and sunspot activities. You didn't know its there? Tut-tut!
And I wouldn't recommend calling Ujang Padang on any frequency at any time. You'll get far more sense from the good old Aussies at Darwin most times. [provided you know the frequency of course <img src="wink.gif" border="0"> ]
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Through difficulties to the cinema