“SOUTHERN CROSS SHOULD HAVE HAD PORTABLE SET.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18785, 14 June 1929, Page 10

“SOUTHERN CROSS SHOULD HAVE HAD PORTABLE SET.”

AIR FORCE WIRELESS OFFICER INTERVIEWED.

“ They don’t realise—these people who go on long distance flights—how very valuable and important an efficient wireless instrument is,” said Flight-Lieutenant Ivor M. Ronald in an interview this morning. “ Take the Kookaburra—that is a case in point—if she had had a wireless instrument . . . that tragedy might never have occurred. “It was a great pity, too, that the Southern Cross did not have a portable, low-powered, short wave set with her. A complete transmitting set of this type can be got, with a range of up to 1500 miles, and can be worked from a single high-tension battery. They could have taken two sets with them; the ordinary high powered set and another, such as I have suggested, in case of a forced landing. It could easily have been accommodated in two boxes and would not have weighed more than twenty pounds complete.” Lieutenant Ronald is an officer of the R.A.F., and has had very considerable experience of wireless telegraph work in connection with the Air Force, lie has been fourteen years in the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force as a wireless man. He served in France, and afterwards spent six years as wireless instructor at the Air Force College. He was then appointed to the charge of the big Air Force wireless station in Iraq. There he had a great deal of experience in connection with civil flying. He is at present making a semi-official tour of the world, and will make a report on the Dominion service to the Air Ministry when he returns to England. The matter of air communication between England and Australia and New Zealand was a question of aerial development, he said. It all depended on how the airships which they were at present building at Home turned out. They were being built on different lines from the German airships, which were similar to the old Zeppelins. Until the new English machines had made their trial flights, it would be difficult to forecast what might happen. The civil air services were going ahead rapidly, however.

Desert Flying. The Cairo-Baghdad desert service was progressing wonderfully. The "planes left Cairo at six o’clock in the morning and arrived at Baghdad at 5.15 p.m. in the evening, having made but two stops, at Gaza and Rutbah, on the 800-mile journey. The last hop from Rutbah was 250 miles. They used Hercules machines with three Jupiter engines. They were splendidly-fitted machines, and, besides carrying ten passengers and their luggage—a weight of 2250 pounds—they took between 300 and 400 pounds of mails in a special compartment. They had now taken thousands of passengers and had only had to make two forced landings. There had so far been no casualties. The chief difficulty to be contended with was the dust.