HOW BRITAIN HEARS CRICKET TESTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5326, 12 February 1947, Page 2

HOW BRITAIN HEARS CRICKET TESTS

Bx*itish cx*icket enthusiasts, listening to the Test match commentaries by their coal-rationed firesides in the ilepth o'f this English wintei*, do not realise how tnuch they owe to a cor'xo.xal and two assistaxxts, dressed only in shox*ts and sandals, who uperate t'he jungle station at' Horokena. The Test match commentaries which reach Britis'h radio listeners eax*ly on vvintxy English mornings, come from „he ground, in the heat of the Ausralian summer, across half the vvox*ld by a xroute which tx*averses the tropics. Radio SE'AC, the station set up by Lord Mountbatten fox* 'the men ixx the ,'ungles and tropical coastal 'towns of ■Douth-East Asia Command, broadcasts "or 161 hours a day news and entex*tainment to the whole of the Far East, •■elaying many B.B.C. programmes ixxd using others in transcription. iow it returns the courtesy by reaying the messages sent out by the hort-wave station of the Australian ilroadcasting- Commission, descri'bing ihe progress of the most widely foliowed cricket matches in the world. These messages are x*elayed iby landine from the ground to the short-wave •.tation, which ti'ansmits tharn by jeam signal to Ceylon. In the jungle eceiving station at Horolk'ena, they ,ix*e picked up by a triple space ■divex*ity receiving* installation. From here ,hey are fed simultaneously to the iadio SEAC studios, for x*ebx*oadcast md to SEAC's 100 k.s. transmitter, in he jungle, fx*om which they are transnitted to the B.B.C. .short-wave reeiving station at Tats field. A fraction f a second after they flash from the leart of the tropical jungle at New Ikala, they are heard in British homes.