Inside the Station

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 1, 22 July 1927, Page 4

Inside the Station

A landimark? Yes, certainiy, but something more-far far more. Though visible for many miles, an tmnpressive object on the height of Mt. Victoria, this attribute of 2YA’s transmitting station pales into insignificance when compared with that intangible and mysterious power whose giant arms will extend over the earth, east and west, north and south, simultaneously overtaking a sunset and greeting the dawn of a to-morrow. «Ind added impressizveness is given to‘ that power, which can be used for the weal or the woe of people, by a visit to the transmutting station, ,One imight expect to ‘see great throbbing engines and whirling flywheels, which one is inclined to associate with power. But there is nothing of the sort. There is a motorgenerator and a mass of intricate mechanism enclosed in a wire cage. Save fora slight hum, all is quict. But all the time this delicate machinery is sending out a power that can be detected and collected by sensitize instruments almost halfway round the world, The transmitting station on ALt. Victoria, overlooking the City of Wellington, is a white, ferro-concrete building, its battlemented parapet giving the impression of an old-time castle, and adding to the apparent strength and solidity of the structure. Soaring skyward are the tao stecl lattice-work towers, 175 feet apart. They carry the aerial, the distributing centre of . those waves of radio energy which sweep the whole of New Zealand, -lustralia, the Pacific and its islands, the Western States of «limerica, and other lands. The aerial is about 750 fect above sea-level, «It the transmitting station the thing which strikes a visitor first és the amount of window space. The walls are almost all plateglass, and the partitions which divide the interior into rooms are plate-glass in steel frames. From the entrance door a corridor runs across the middle of the building. This acts as an insulator and keeps the sound of the motor generator set away from the transmitting plunt. The room this occupies is almost half of the whole floor space. The cunning and complicated mechanism which makes wireless telephony possible is housed in a great cagelike structure, on the front of which there are numerous meters, levers, wheels, and push-buttons, besides three windows, which enable the operator to keep a careful eye on the values and on all other vulnerable parts of the machinery.