AERADIO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 July 1938, Page 9

AERADIO

COMMUNICATIONS FOR AVIATION NEW ZEALAND’S EFFECTIVE SYSTEM. The new facilities required by the development of commercial aviation in New Zealand include a complete self-contained radio communication system. This has steadily grown during the past few years until New Zealand is now provided with a chain of aeradio stations which are generally within 100 miles of each other. They are situated at Mangere (Auckland), New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Gisborne, Napier, and Wellington in the North Island; and Christchurch, Dunedin, Blenheim, Nelson, Greymouth, Hokitika, and Jackson’s Bay in the South Island. The daily route mileage of aeroplane services ?in New Zealand approximates 3,000 miles, and at every moment of the journey the commercial planes are in communication with an aeradio station. The system has developed under the direction of an expert committee of which the Chairman is the Director of Civil Aviation and the other members representative of the aerodrome branch of the Public Works Department, the Meteorological Office, and the Engineering Branch of the Post and Telegraph Department. This committee has formulated the plan of communications for air services and delegated to the Post Office the duty of providing the equipment and the personnel for its operation. The long experience of the Post Office in radio transmission was brought to bear on the problems of equipment, and its telegraph organisation provided the expert operators. for working the service, the number now employed being 20. They have been trained at the Department’s commercial radio station, ZLW Wellington. Communication is provided between the aeradio stations and with the planes when flying. The system enables weather conditions to be ascertained along the route before a plane commences its journey, and if there is any development of importance during the journey the pilot can be informed. There have been instances where a plane has been recalled by instruction received in the air from its departure point owing to the receipt of information regarding adverse conditions it would have to face if it completed its proposed trip. If visibility at the landing ground is poor, directions can be given from the ground to the pilot by radio telephone, and with the equipment about to be installed it will shprtly be possible during the journey for a pilot to call up an aeradio station to get a bearing. A further development making for safer aerial navigation is the provision now being made of radio approach beams. These will not extend from station to station, but the pilot who maintains the correct general course will, when within 25 or 30 miles of his proposed destination, pick up a directional radio beam giving a clear indication regarding the remainder of the route.

Pilots through the medium of the radio telephone are able to communicate with each other while in the air. The ground stations operate by means of morse and radio telephony, using the medium waves for aircraft communication, and the morse on short waves for inter-aerodronie contact. The aeroplane equipment is normally designed for both morse and telephony transmissions, but on single-pilot machines telephony is generally used. The larger machines carrying a co-pilot communicate by either morse or telephony. As the requirements of safety demand the maximum rather than the minimum of communication between ground and air, no message rate is charged on aeradio communications.