TWO-WAY SEA TALK

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 90, 31 March 1932, Page 4

TWO-WAY SEA TALK

STEAMER’S MODERN PLANT MORE POWERFUL THAN IYA. IN TOUCH WITH TROPIC ISLES. Though she could hardly be termed a broadcasting station afloat, the s.s. Triona, the British Phosphate Commission’s vessel, now on her maiden visit to Auckland, has a radio telephone equipment with one and a-half times the output power of our own IYA. The Triona carries the most up-to-the-min-ute radio equipment in the Pacific Ocean, and with the commission’s other steamer, the Nauru Chief, shares the distinction of being the only oceangoing vessel in the Pacific from which two way ship-to-shore conversation can be carried on. The radio-telephone transmitter, a compact and solid piece of workmanship, was manufactured in Australia, and operates with a 750 watt power, on a wave length of 705 metres, well above the Morse channel of 600 metres used by the mercantile marine. The radiophone of the Triona enables her captain or any of the executive officers of the commission to maintain reliable conversation with the shore telephony plants on Nauru or Ocean Island,' and also with the Nauru Chief. Given good atmospheric conditions, a clear conversation range of over 2000 miles is obtainable, as was demonstrated a few months ago, when those aboard the Triona, then lying off Nauru, chatted with fellow employees on the Nauru Chief, just making a landfall at Wanganui. For utility and reliability this radiophone service has proved invaluable to the Phosphate Commission's service, especially as the main means of communication between the two islands, Nauru and Ocean, is of the same kind.

In addition to her telephone equipment, unique in power for any vessel south of the Line, the Triona carries a special Morse transmitter, also of Australian manufacture, which can be operated on either long or short waves. On the short wave —36 metres —the whole world is within communication, and it is possible to transmit direct to any port on the globe that has a commercial receiving station tuned for the reception of such messages. Alongside the operator’s table in his room of modern wizardry is also an automatic S.O.S. detector, which will pick up and giro bell warning of distress signals even if no one is on watch at the set.

In her wireless equipment, as in her special gear for handling the deepest moorings in the world, her fine accommodation for the commission’s staff, who are carried to and from the islands, and her special cool storage for taking supplies of fresh meat and vegetables to the two little equatorial specks she supplies, the Triona is certainly the last word in shipping achievement, and a tribute to the amount of thought and consideration given by her owners.