GIANT BROADCASTER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3813, 25 September 1936, Page 12

GIANT BROADCASTER

FOR NEW ZEALAND NATIONAL SERVICE. Mr O. A. E. O’Brien, local distributor of the Fisk Radiola, has received particulars of the gigantic new broadcasting transmitter just completed by Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Limited, at its Ashfield works for the Wellington station of the New Zealand National Broadcasting Service. This mighty instrument excels anything of its nature in the Southern Hemisphere. 2YA will operate on a wave length of 526 metres (570 kilo-cycles) with the enormous power of 60,000 watts unmodulated in the aerial, being equal to any station on the medium wave band in the British Empire. The power drawn from the mains to operate the transmitter is of the order of 350,000 watts. Situated on an eminence just north of Titahi Bay, a small seaside resort 16 miles from Wellington, the new station will give unimpeded radiation throughout the Dominion of New Zealand, and it is confidently expected that the programme will be received without difficulty in Australia and the South Pacific generally. The equipment is being shipped to New Zealand this month, and will be in operation by the end of this year. This station is the fifth designed, constructed and installed by A.W.A. for the New Zealand national service in the past three years. The first was a temporary station at Christchurch with a power of 3,000 watts; then came Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, each of 10,000 watts. An impression of the magnitude of the Wellington station is revealed in the fact that its power exceeds the combined power used by all broadcasting stations in the capital cities of Australia. To ensure that the quality of the transmission will be of the highest, the system of series modulation is employed. This form of modulation has been used with marked success by Amalgamated Wireless in other stations of the N.Z. National Service and in a number of B class stations in Australia. Series modulation is also used In practically all the stations of the British Broadcasting Corporation. When the 2YA transmitter is fully modulated to 100 per cent, the instantaneous power fed to the aerial on the peaks of modulation will be 240,000 watts. A single mast will carry the aerial system. This will be 700 ft. high and will bo situated at a distance of approximately 400 yards from the transmitting house. The mast has been designed to withstand a wind velocity of 110 miles per hour. It stands upon insulators, and every guy is also insulated, the insulated portions being so proportioned that there is no risk of any fundamental or harmonic radiation taking place tending to distort the shape of the radiated wave.