RADIO EMERGENCY CORPS

Southland Times, Issue 23227, 16 June 1937, Page 15

RADIO EMERGENCY CORPS

BRANCH IN INVERCARGILL Operating in various parts of New Zealand is a body of amateur radio transmitters called the Radio Emergency Corps, which hitherto has not become well known, but which, nevertheless, is ready at a moment’s notice to perform valuable service in times of tragedy or national calamity with mobile transmitting and receiving equipment and a body of trained operators. The Invercargill section of the corps, which is under the leadership of Mr H. Sutton, consists of seven operators and five assistants, and all the operators are efficient telegraphists, having passed the radio transmitter’s examination and the necessary examinations in radio theory and regulations. Already at Dunedin the unit has given assistance to the New Zealand Defence Forces during the period in which the army and navy put into practice a coastal defence scheme. Speaking to The Southland Times last night the secretary (Mr E. J. W. Graham) mentioned the Homer Tunnel tragedy as an instance where the corps could have been of value in transmitting news. Had the corps been made aware of the situation it would have been possible to have established an immediate service to handle Press messages, he said. The method of operating Is to establish a base, for example Invercargill, then a zone, with a higher powered transmitter and finally an outpost, which goes to the site of the trouble. “We hope,” Mr Graham said, “that the Automobile Association, Public Works Department or any other interested bodies will avail themselves of these services should the occasion warrant it.”