WIRELESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19248, 27 February 1925, Page 3

WIRELESS

By

The Grid

Broadcasting in England. An article by Captain Eckersley, the chief engineer of the British Broadcasting Co., in a recent issue of Radio Broadcast, gives some interesting information regarding conditions in England. His comments on the difficulties experienced by the 8.8. C. arc decidedly humourous. The following extract may be of interest to local amateurs. He says "We erected eight main stations of one and one-half kilowatt each. These were dotted wver England, to try and i uniform distribution throughout zones. Now the Englishman is a peculiar person, and having once got his set going, he doos not keep on reaching out for more and more distance. He does not care to reach out, nor has he any ambition to reach Australia on half a valve. He is far more keen to get a pure, undisturbed signal, and he is content to hear the. single one coming from his local station. And our ambition is that any man in England can listen in on an apparatus made up of a clothesline or a piece of string, and can really hear his programme uninterruptedly. An<l this is the way we have worked it out. The one ambition I have had is to give everybody so good a signal that they can not. complain of the engineering side of it. but. always must complain of the programmes. I am an •ngineer! Well, that ideal was not realised by the erection of the one and one-half kilowatt stations, because outside thirty miles from each station the service is not what wo consider perfect, because it is liable to interruption. You know in England we are all packed together, and there is a great deal of shipping to cause interruption. A Frenchman fishing off our •.-cats will signal back and. forth with his nearest home station about how many fish he has caught, and every time he tells about it, the while the fish constantly grow longer, he requires a longer message to narrate the thing. And so we. must create much stronger signals to overcome his interference. There are large areas in densely packed places where people cannot receive easily, so we have erected relay stations, designed to serve only the town or city in which they arc situated. It would be too expensive to provide programmes every day for these small stations up to the excellence of the programmes wo provide in the large stations, so we have linked these up by ordinary wire to our London programmes. But unfortunately wo have no control over rhe trunk lines to the relay stations. Wo put a signal on the wire and the Government does the rest, and sometimes it arrives at the other end! Still th« sevrice is an extraordinary good one, considering it has grown up in the way it has. Another function of the relay station is that we are able to give a local programme from that station. Every city of course thinks it is a little better than the next one, and if they can talk about it on the radio, it pleases them. So we give these stations over to local civic functions etc. In Sheffield they give the annual talk of the master of that city, or in Liverpool, someone speaks treating of cotton prices etc., all the things that pertain to the locality. They use that station to create local interest, whereas if there had been some impersonal large high-powered station, it would have bored Liverpool for instance, horribly, to have to listen to the superlative merits of Glasgow or Manchester! So we have the main stations and the relay stations, and with that establishment I estimtae that taking crystal reception as a basis, out of the fortythree million people we can serve, exactly fifty per cent, could get a signal on an ordinary simple crystal set. They use the crystal set almost to a man. You would be amazed to see the extent which this simple set is used. I should think that forty-five per cent, of those who can use a crystal set do so. Nearly everybody has a crystal set. They love it. They put it in a corner and sit all night listening. Considering the number of the relay stations, you may ask about the variety of the items in the programmes. The variety is there alright. We block the programme out to cater for all tastes, from that of the meanest intelligerfbe to that of the highest high-brow. We vary our selections from the more humble '"Rhapsodic Hongroise” of Liszt up to the classical "Yes We Have no Bananas!” We have tried to keep the "Yes, We Have No Bananas” side of it down just a bit, however, and our great criticism is that we are sending much too highbrow programmes. Well, as a matter of fact, it is a subtle complimnt to pay to anybody to give him something rather above him, and we have found it immensely successful. With the new high-power station we have recently erected we may say that almost seventy per cent, of the population of Great Britain is served by crystal, and while the manufacturers may not be quite sc pleased about it, at any rata the people whom we are serving are, and we feel that the manufacturer has a great field, because he will be able to concentrate on the one thing that needs concentration, that is, the perfect quality, the perfect transmission of sound between the studio and the drawing room or kitchen.”

The above remarks are particularlyinteresting to New Zeaalnd amateurs in view of the fact that our broadcasting scheme is slowly being evolved. The New Zealand company might do worse than adopt the policy of the 8.8. C., i.e., provide a few main stations of fairly high power, with relay stations in the smaller centres. The talent available in the main centres might perhaps provide most of the items, while these might be interspersed with items of local interest from each relay station. Furthermore, the aim to make crystal working possible anywhere in the country is one which our authorities might well adopt. He does not of course mean that because crystal reception is possible everyone will use a crystal set. This is extremently improbable, since if the programmes are good enough most people will desire loudspeaker strength, which means valves and valve sets galore. But the fact of crystal set working being possible almost anywhere in the country would immensely stimulate listening in, since good results would be quite certain.

Club Notes. Preparations are now being made at the local club station, 2AH, for the broadeasting by Mr. A.. E. Maunder of his weekly lectures on "Notable Figures in History.” The following list of the subjects of the first six lectures will give listeners some idea of the scope of the subject. (I) Pericles, statesman of Athens, (2) Socrates, (3) Lycurgus, creator of the Spartan system, (4) Plato and Aristolle, (5) Alexander the Great, (6) Cato, censor of Rome. Quite a number of listeners have expressed their gratification at the initiative shown both by the lecturer and by the Radio Club in in undertaking such a programme. Undoubtedly history as an educational and instructive subject becomes more important every day, and the opportunity to hear really good lectures will no doubt be seized by amateurs all round the district. Mr. Maunder’s first lecture will be delivered on Saturday fortnight. Certain tests must be conducted to enable the most satisfactory method of broadcasting the lectures to be found, and amateurs are requested to make reports of these tests to Mr. Robinson, the station operator. On Tuesday last certain tests were to be carried out, but unfortunately just after the conclusion of the morse practice, one oscillator valve burnt out and owing to there being no efficient spare valve available, the tests had to be left over. As soon as another valve is to hand and the opportunity presents itself further tests will be made. Talking of burnt out valves reminds us that the club funds are getting low once more, and all members should make a point of paying their subscriptions without delay. Without funds 2ATI simply cannot continue to broadcast. Next Wednesday the lecturer at the usual fortnightly meeting will be Mr. C. F. Goodman, who will deal with the Neutrodyne circuit. This circuit has become very popular in America and is even coming in favour in England, so that information on the subject will doubtless be welcomed by club members. w • • • General Notes. There are indications from Germany that radio is progressing there, even if nut at the rapid pace it has assumed in other countries. At Lake Kockelsee, in Bavaria, a station is being erected which it .is claimed will be the most powerful in Europe. The antennae will extend along the side of a mountain, from the summit to the base, while the station is being erected on the shore of the lake. This will give an antennae two miles long and of rather indefinite height so far as radiation efficiency is concerned. We do not know the wavelength proposed for the station, but the fa--, that the aerial is to be two miles lung would certainly point, to more than the usual few hundred metres wave length being used. In America fight promoters arc finding that the broadcasting of the fights is destroying their profits. Tex Rickard, who makes a good living by matching prize fighters, has just banned radio from his arenas. For the past three years bouts have been fought before the microphono so that the cheers anil jeers, the gong, and even the thud of blows could be heard by the radio listener. And -so vividly has radio portrayed the fight that many have preferred to stay at home, where there was no admission to pay, and no crowd of a hundred thousand to push through. So Air. Rickard has decided that hereafter radio and he shall part company, and the fight fan who wants to see two human beings batter eae.h other for about £2OO a punch will have to go to the scene and contribute his share of the gate receipts. It is now less than five weeks to the time when the amendment to the Post and Telegraph Act, providing for the charge of higher license fees to broadcast listeners will come into force. So far as is known the present stations will continue to operate after April 1 and the transmissions will therefore remain much the same in strength and quality as they are now. It will be extremely unfair if immediate steps are taken fo compel listeners to pay the higher license fees, and this is especially so in the case of listeners in districts remote from the centres. In Wanganui the local Radio Club maintains a station, which although of low power, provides broadcasting for a large number of crystal sets. To insist on these people paying license fees to maintain stations which they cannot hear will be a grave injustice, and wo will welcome some definite statement by the Government as to its intentions in the matter. Static has been extremely troublesome during the past week, the cause, no doubt, being the stormy weather, which, seems to have been accompanied by a severe electrical disturbance. This induces a speculation as to the possibility o fthere being established in the future a static forecasting bureau, which could warn broadcasters and listeners a day or two ahead whether static was to be expected. We all know how annoying it is to get some friends along to hear 2FC or 2BL and then to find that static absolutely blots out everything. How delightful it would be if w'e knew a week before hand just what the atmospheric conditions were going to be. Failing the provision of an effective static eliminator, a static forecast seems quite a good idea. The only method known now to eliminate static is to make the signals so strong that the static is drowned. The correspondent to the Dominion a week or two ago who suggested a lead pipo for an earth lead as a means of eliminating static seems to have been pulling our friend "Aerial’s” leg.