RADIO GUIDES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 November 1938, Page 5

RADIO GUIDES

CONDITION OF SAFE FLYING IN AUSTRALIA STATEMENTS AT KYEEMA INQUIRY. CRITICISM OF PRESENT ARRANGEMENTS. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. MELBOURNE, November 3. There was a complete absence of radio guides to Australian airports in bad weather, Captain G. H. Purves, pilot of Australian National Airways on the Melbourne-Sydney route, told, the Air Accidents Investigation Committee inquiring into the Kyeema disaster today. To his mind, he said, the installation of the Lorenz radio beam would solve all pilots’ troubles. Weather information, he added, was reasonably accurate but was not given in enough detail. Captain Webb, the pilot of the Kyeema, received ten to twelve words when he should have received a general indication of conditions round Melbourne. Witness said that the wave-lengths now used for communication with planes was the worst possible from- the viewpoint pf static interference and there was grave risk of similar interference if the beacon was installed on the same wavelength. W. Launder Cridge, radio operator at Essendon airport, said that all aircraft signals were frequently blotted out by a police transmitter operating a few miles from the aerodrome and sometimes by the national radio station 3AR.

Squadron Leader C. S. Wiggins, superintendent of the Radio Civil Aviation Board, said that the two outstanding aircraft radio 'difficulties in Australia were, the high prevailing noise level due to atmospheric interference, which was far greater than in the United States and Europe, and the wider distance between the aerodromes and radio stations than in Europe and the United States.

Witness said that beacon systems could not enable blind landings* to be accepted as a normal procedure. He classified them as low-ceiling approach systems.

The inquiry was adjourned, till tomorrow.