BEACON STATION AT START POINT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18203, 2 March 1929, Page 16

BEACON STATION AT START POINT.

DIRECTION FINDING IN THE CHANNEL. A wireless beach installation, built at Start Point, by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., for the Corporation of Trinity House, has just been completed. This typo of station transmits a special signal on an exclusive wavelength of 1000 metres for the benefit of ships equipped with wireless direction-finders. The Start Point installation is the seventh of its kind now established round the British coasts, others having been installed at Round Island. Sherries Spurn Lightship, The Casquet3 (Channel Islands), Start Point, Bar Lightship. Albatross (Coninberg, Ireland), and in the near future beacon stations of the Marconi type will be installed at Side Skerry (Scotland). Lundy North, Dungeness, Kinnaird Head (Scotland), Cromer, South Bishop, and other pla- os, in addition to similar stations for which orders have been received in other parts of the world. The completion of the Start Point transmitter means that very effective cross-bearings can now be taken by ships" using the three Channel stations as their fixed points, and they can thus obtain a sequence of bearings whenever required by the navigators, and can'be sure of their position light up the Channel. Since the wireless direction-finder has become firmly established and more generally employed on the merchantvessels of the world, the demand has arisen for the erection of permanent installations situated at places of advantage from a shipping point of view round the coast, and whose function it is to send out a recognised signal at convenient intervals, purely for the purpose of enabling ships fitful with direction-finders to take their bearings and thereby find their exact position when approaching the coast. One of the great advantages of the system of position finding in which a wireless beacon station qf the Marconi type at a known position is used in conjunction with a direction-finder on board ship is that the signals are broadcast in all directions, and a direct bearing can therefore be taken on tho transmitter from any direction ut every signal sent out by it. This method K therefore, particularly suitable for lightship installation, as the swinging of the ship’s head does not affect the accuracy of the bearing obtained, and navigators can lay off their wireless bearings on familiar points on the chart. The Marconi beacon transmitter ot tho typo fitted in the British Isles has a power of 500 watts, and is operated on a wavelength of 1000 metres, which is the specified wavelength for wireless beacon stations, and the whole equipment- is automatically controlled by a master clock for transmitting groups of interrupted continuous wave (1.C.W.) signals at pre-arranged intervals.