BRITISH & FOREIGN NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 24 August 1926, Page 3

BRITISH & FOREIGN NEWS

[Reuter Telegrams.] BEAM SYSTEM. (Received this day at 1.30 pm) LONDON, Aug. 23. It is learned that unofficial tests of Canada’s beam wireless over some days kept up the reception here at the rate of one hundred words per minute for twenty-four hours, but at other times through inexplicable perverseness of other signals, often faded out to such extent as to defy amplification to make them audible. Consequently experts are concentrating on experiments to overcome the problem of fading. It will probably be found that bv the time Australia’s stations are completed that Grimsby and Skegness will l»e governed bv the results of these experiments. It is yet too early to talk of possible experiments by Australia’s beam system but the indications point to its period of greatest utility being during the night for the despatch of messages from England. Experts believe the use of different wave lengths at different times of the day may widen the period of Australian utility. Both stations in .England will he about one third the size of Rugby. Each will have tan C.C. masts three hundred feet high compared with Rugby’s eight hundred. The plant is virtually ready for assembling, but the date of testing is nob yet considered. Charts of tlio strength of receptions rat various Government testing stations reveal tKnfc this has been a particularly bad year, which possibly explains why so little successful antipodean-' amateur communications have been carried through. Experimenters inscribe instability to ether and influence of sunspots, the maximum cycle period of which has yet to come. Despite this weakness, surprising progress has been made in trans-Atlantic wireless telephony giving hope that during some periods of the day, a low wave conversation with Australia may be possible.