BACK FROM WAR TO RADIO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 152, 22 May 1942, Page 7

BACK FROM WAR

TO RADIO

"Colin" Of 3ZB HEY don’t call him Sergeant Sutton now. He’s Colin to everyone at 3ZB, where he is one of the men in the station’s control room. For after serving in the Middle East with the N.Z.E.F. and seeing hard fighting in both Greece and Libya, Sergeant | C. L. Sutton has returned to Christchurch and achieved a lifelong ambition -a job in radio. People who like to ‘boast about the capabilities of their receiving sets should be careful when Colin Sutton is around. He has five, and if there’s a station he doesn’t log, it is probably because he hasn’t had time to get round to it. His experience of radio goes back to the hectic days when a high nor’west wind made reception of even the local station a gamble for Christchurch listeners. And a receiver which logged America made headlines. By 1929, Colin had a five-valve set with which he could claim daylight reception of 2BL, Sydney. This brought him his first card, and from then on, after the manner of DX enthusiasts, he proceeded to paper the walls of his home with cards from stations all over the world. Buying a bigger set, he joined up with the New Zealand DX Club, and in 1934-35 he was secretary of the Marlborough-Canterbury branch. He a

was also one of a small band of "amateur-experts" who formed a small club in New Brighton to help old people get better reception from their sets. During these years, thanks to a wide correspondence with enthusiasts overseas, he was becoming well known as an amateur, and at the beginning of 1935, he was asked to become Oceanic representative of the Universal Radio DX Club of America. Shortly afterwards, this big organisation conducted a worldwide DX contest, for which, five months before closing date, Colin Sutton entered. In five months he logged 395 different stations, all at least 2000 miles from his receiver, and won the contest, The club had at that time 2,500 members, and the second competitor, who was

an American amateur, logged 287 stations. Colin joined up at the outbreak cf war and went overseas as a sergeant. At the Middle East Weapon Training School he qualified with high marks as an instructor, and later went into the desert with the Army Service Corps. He was "blown up" four times in Libya, and eventually, wounds in his foet brought him back to New Zealand. His first thought on his return was to get a job in radio. He approached Harry Bell, 3ZB’s station director, and was given an opportunity to see the station in action and to learn ite daily routine. Then, with Mr. Bell’s help, he secured a position on the station’s technical staff.