Over The AERIAL

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18873, 17 February 1933, Page 8

Over The AERIAL

by rheostat

THE COMING WEEK.

Sunday —lYA: 7, service from Pitt Street Methodist Church; 8, studio concert. 2YA —7, service from St. John’s Presbyterian Church; 8.15, studio concert. 3YA —7, service from Christohuroh Anglican Cathedral; 8.20, relay of conoert from 4YA, Dunedin.

Monday —lYA: Talks, 11 “Care of the Feet,” 7.30 “Autumn Manuring”; 8, studio concert. 2YA —Talks, 11.30 "Health Hints or First Aid,” 3.15 “Home Science”; 8, studio ooncert; 10, dance music. 3YA —Talks, 11 “Artcrafts," 3.15 “Home Science," 7.30 “Youth and Industry"; 8, concert by Band of Canterbury Regiment. Tuesday —lYA: 7.35, book review; 8, studio concert; 10, dance music. 2YA —Talks, 11 "Fabrics and Fashions," 7.40 “For the Man on the Land”; 8, concert by Raukawa Maori Party. 3 YA—Talks, 11 “Colour Scheme and Design,” 7.30 “Farming in the Argentine”; 8, studio concert; 9.30, dance music. Wednesday IYA: 11, talk, “Women’s Interests”; 8, studio concert; 9.30, dance music. 2YA—Talks, 11.30 “Hollywood Affairs,” 7.40 “For the Home Gardener”; 8.0, studio concert. 3YA —11, talk, “Home and Garden"; 7.30, Addington stock market reports; 8, studio concert; 10, dance music.

Thursday —lYA: 11, talk; 8, studio concert. 2YA —3, home science talk; 8, studio concert. 3YA—10.15, reports of third wool sale of season; talks, 11 “Self-culture," 7.45 “The RSd Cross Soolety"; 8, programme of recordings. Friday —lYA: 11, talk; 7.30, sports talk; 8, studio concert. 2YA—7.40, talk, “Roads and Motoring”; 8, studio concert; 9.30, dance music. 3YA — 11, talk, “Feeding the Family”; 3.30, progress reports of fifth test match; 8, studio concert. Saturday —lYA: 7.70, horticultural talk; 8, • studio concert; 10, sports summary; 10.10, danoe music. 2YA—--2.30, results of Wellington Provincial Athletic Championships; 8, studio concert; 10, sports summary; 10.10, dance music. 3YA —Description of New Brighton Trotting Club’s meeting; 8, relay of comedy “Charley's Aunt”; 10, sports summary; 10.10, dance music.

ROMANCE OF DAVENTRY. BEAM WIRELESS TO EMPIRE. - A PARADOX OF SIZE. This hilltop, which has hitherto raised only two sets of wireless masts towards the clouds, has now grown a forest of posts and poles for the Empire broadcasting which now serves the far corners of the earth (says the London Times, in an article on the Empire station at Davcntry). Overseas visitors, who will doubtless want to see this station in the future, must he prepared for some ■disappointment at iLs size. No aerial taller than 150 feet, yet paradoxically tlie great 500 feet masts of the National aerial tower up into the clouds only 100 yards away, to serve not an Empire hut one of the smallest lands within tlie Empire.

The thing seems incredible and certainly incongruous. One of the greatest broadcasting feats has been accomplished and continued day after day as a regular service. Its only visible sign is a set of low aerials, no taller than many high-tension cables that cross our roads, no thicker, apparently, than some telegraph wires. These are grouped roughly round a small low building which houses the electrical apparatus of broadcasting, again a smaller and less powerful station in the electrical sense than that of the National transmitter alongside it. A Bow to Australia.

These unimposing aerials do, nevertheless, reveal some of the secrets of their great purpose. They face, for example, in different directions. The line of Australian aerials is at right angles to that which servo South Africa. The West African set is almost back to back with the Australian. The aerials' are sighted on to their distant areas. They look forth across the curved surface of* the earth towards the lands where their waves must particularly be received. The direction in which to how towards Australia across a round world is evidently either north-east or south-west. In order that they may direct their waves along appropriate lines these vertical aerials are so set, with reflector wires behind them, to create a sort of beam effect. The Australian set of aerials is especially interesting because it is built to reflect its wide beam either way. The wireless waves may pass across Northern Europe, Siberia and part of India, or, when conditions that way are unfavourable, across the Atlantic, America and Hie Pacific. The path is chosen according to the needs of the moment. Its choice for the present will depend upon advices, day by day, as to the state of Ihe ether, and no one in Australia will know which way his service lias come until experience can produce charts for the service of long-distance broadcasting and conditions at various times or seasons can be forecast.

Short Aerials. Direction and reflectors may be seen. The short length of the aerials reveals another secret of the Empire station, for tlie length of the aerial roughly explains the wave-length in use. This is a short-wave station, lienee Ihe stumpiness of Hie aerial masts. The 14-metre aerial which may serve 'South Africa looks an impossible piece of apparatus for broadcasting over (1000 miles, yet it, like most of the others, lias done its work well in tlie tests. The short wave is similarly Ihe secret of the transmuting station's small size and equipment. This station will give out much less power, though it needs a higher rale of frequency. Frequencies arc controlled by crystal oscillators and the apparatus which' serves this end occupies little space and is wholly unexciting to watch.

For the rest, it may lie said that the equipment is similar to that of the ordinary broadcasting station, but is of smaller dimensions. Here are the

generators, the amplifying valves, the transformers and the cooling system. Emergency Plant. The valves are cooled by distilled water (distilled on the premises); the water Is cooled by a system similar to that of a motor-oar’s radiator; if it rises to a temperature of more than about 50 degrees G. an alarm bell rings and steps are taken to put the overheating valves out of service and to bring the reserves into use. There can be little risk of a breakdown in this station, for almost every piece of apparatus is in duplicate. Yet the station has no spectacular side. The arrangement of the aerials is not even symmetrical. The transmitting station is neat, compaot, and businesslike—impersonal, as it were, and coldly polished.

The dweller in the Dominions who in spirit travels to the Homeland will be happier to think of Broadcasting House, whence the music and speech will oome for amplification and broadcasting to this bleak hilltop. It will be handled here in an almost mechanical sense at all sorts of hours between 9 a.m. and 3 a.m. (G.M.T.). Sometimes it will be “the real thing,” coming straight from human sources in studio and concert hall and restaurant; sometimes an hours-oid programme, recorded on a Blattnerphone, will hum its revived course over land lines to this chill theatre of amplification and distribution; and settlers in distant places will hear again the things which happened hours before as though they were just occurring.

An English Scene. However the Empire listener may hear the sounds of Home he wall know that their last point of departure was a green hilltop, 600 feet above the sea, dropping away on one side to the modest spire of a small town church, and on the other to tree-dotted fields that are always green—fields that are very typical of England. Of the station he will not often need to think, for it has no dignity or pomp, no particular flavour of England, no engineering marvels. It is just a small, low building, with a rough fringe of small aerials, a small forest of poles and “clothes-lines,” and dependent aerials. These are the things which send out wireless beams which may measure 2000 miles across at their receiving areas.

A photograph would not even show how a listener’s particular set of aerials are directed by their thin wire reflectors towards him, and this is the one point of special contact on which the listener in the outposts can seize. He will be able to listen every day to Home, and even when he is not listening he may be glad to remember that a small aerial on a green hilltop near the centre of England is still sighted in his direction.