DAVENTRY NERVE CENTRE OF EMPIRE'S BROADCAST.

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 508, 17 April 1933, Page 2

DAVENTRY NERVE CENTRE OF EMPIRE'S BROADCAST.

The hilltop at Daventry which has hitherto raitsed only two sets of wireless masts towards the clouds, has now grown a forest of posts and poles for the Empire broadcasting iservice. Overseas visitors, who will doubtless want to see this station in the future, must be prepared for some disappoinment at its size. No aerial is taller than 150 feet, yet paradoxically the gMat 500 feet masts of th^ national aerial tower up into the clouds only 100 yards away, to serve not an Empire but oue of the smallest landis^ within the Empire. The thing seems incredible iand certainly incongruous. One of the greatest broadcastinjg feats has been accomplished and is to be continued day after day as a regulax1 iservice. Its only visible sign will be a set of low aerials, no taller than rnany of the high-tension cahles that cross our roads, no thicker, lapparently, than some telegraph' wires. These are grouped roughly roynd a small low building which houses the lelectrical apparatus of broadcasting, again ia smaller and less powerful station in th'e electrical sense than that of the National transmitter alongside of it. Secrets of Direction. These unimposing aerials do, nevertheless, reveal some of the secrets of their great purpose. They face, for example in -differenlj directions. The line of New Zealand aerials is at right angles to that which is to serve South Afriea. The West African set ds almost back to back with th'e New Zealand. The aerials are isighted on to their distant areas. They look forth across the cruved surface of the earth toward the lands where their waves miist particularly he reeeived. The direction in which to how toward New Zealand across a round world ds evidently either north-east or south- west. In order that they may direct their waves along appropriate lines, these vertioal aerials are iso set, with reflector wires behind them, to create a sort of beam effect. 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 come for amplification and broadcasting to this bleak hilltop. It will be handled here in an almost mechanical serise at all sorts of hours between 9 a.m. and 3 a.m. Greenwdch mean time. •Sometimes it will be "the real thing," coming straight from human sources in studio and coneert hall and restaurant: isometimes an hours-old pfogramme, recorded on a Blattnerphone, will hum its revived course over land lines to this chill theatre of amplification and 'distribution; anjd settlers in distant^ plaoes will hear again the things which happened hours before, as though they iwere just occurrinig. However, the Empire listener may hear the sounds of home, he will knoW that their last pnint 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 fieMs that are always green — fields that are very typical of Engiiand.