Like John Hill my HF experience was in the S Pacific. we regularly heard traffic working down through West Africa. There was one occasion when a BCAL aircraft who had been vainly calling Bangui, Brazzaville and others finally said,"Other station on 8924 can you relay for me?" Sadly I couldn't but he did seem rather bemused to be working someone half a world away. Incidentally both our AFTN and SITA links were on HF RTTY. The french built teleprinters were just as noisy as the Creeds we had in UK. As for deafness, I think my hearing was saved when we got SSB.