SHORTWAVE RADIO

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 14, 17 July 1934, Page 8

SHORTWAVE RADIO

EMERGENCY CONTACT

;;:;'•'chain of stations

Chrisrchurch recently leported progress made in the development of. the Post and Telegraph Department's system of ensuring communication in Canterbury in any period of breakdown of the usual telegraphic <5r telephonic hervices by means of fchort-wave radio. The system is not peculiar to\ Canterbury, for, since the almost completo breakdown of the telegraphic system iir Hawkc's Bay in the earthquake in 1931, the Department has gone quietly ahead and has nojv. a chain of nineteen stations, between Whangarei in the north, and Half Moon Bay, Stewart Island, at the- other end of the Dominion, with branches of the main chain reaching out to Napier aild Wanganui in the North. Island, and Karamea and .Westport in the South Island. Tho Wellington station is located near the automatic, telephone exchange, and like all these emergency short-wave stations is quite a small outfit which calls for •no tall masts or obvious outside paraphernalia. The stations are so spaced that the required, range is a matter of a hundred miles 6? so, and tests inad'e regularly show that the system is veryreliable.

It has been user] seriously once or twice, as when Gisborne was temporarily cut off telegraphically from the southern portion of the island, and when communication with Karamea was lost through line breakages. The system is, of course, quite apart from the broadcasting system, and aims at maintaining official communication between centres iv the event of telegraphic failure, whether from storm, earthquake, or other cause.

Apart from the stress of hours of doubt and uncertainty,when ordinary means, of communication fail—as in the.case of tho Hawke's Bay earth--1 quake—lack of means of sending and receiving messages as to urgent needs is serious indeed. Napier was able to make..known her plight and most pressingnee'ds by messages transmitted by a naval boat in port at tho time, but' even so communication wa's most difficult, and amatoi1 radio transmitters yrere semi-officially xelied upon to assist in maintaining touch. It was days before the people of Karamea were able to advise the Dominion how serious the effects of the Murchison earthquake had been in that locality, but in future1 the official emergency ■ short-wave% stations-will be able to take over the handling of urgent messages with very little! delay. . ■ .. :