Beacon Station at Start Point

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 30, 8 February 1929, Unnumbered Page

Beacon Station at Start Point

Direction Finding in the Channel A WIRELESS beacon installation built at- Start Point by .Marconi’s: Wireless Telegraph Co., Ltd., for the Corporation of Trinity House has just been completed. This type of station transmits a special signal on an exclusive wavelength of 1000. metres for the benefit of ships equipped. with wireless directionfinders. The Start Point installation is the seventh of its kind now established round the British coasts, others having been installed at Round Island, Skerries, Spurn Lightship, The Casquets (Channel Islands), Start Point, Bar Lightship, Albatross (Coninbeg, Ireland), and in the near future beacon stations of the Marconi type will be installed ‘at Sule Skerry (Scotland), Lundy North; Dungeness, Kinnaird Head (Scotland), Cromer, South Bishop, and other places, in addition to similar stations for which orders have been received in other parts of the world. The completion of the Start Point transmitter means that very effective cross-bearings can now be taken by ships using the three Channel stations as their fixed points, and they can thus obtain a sequence of bearings whenever required by the navigators and can be sure of their position right up the Channel. Since the wireless direction-finder has become firmly established and more generally employed on the merchant vessels of the world the demand has arisen for the erection of permanent installations situated at places of advantage from a shipping point of view round the coast and whose function it is to send out a recognised signal at convenient intervals purely for the purpose of enabling ships fitted with direction-finders to take their bearings and thereby find their exact position when approaching the coast. One of-the great advantages of the system of position finding in which a

wireless beacon station of the Marconi type at a known position is used in conjunction with a direction-finder on board ship is that the signals are broadcast in all directions and a dire¢t bearing can therefore be taken on the transmitter from any direction at every signal sent out by it. This method is, therefore, particularly suitable for lightship installation, as the swinging of the ship’s head does not affect the accuracy of the bearing obtained, and navigators can lay off their wireless bearings on familiar points on the chart. The Marconi beacon transmitter of the type fitted in the British Isles has a power of 500 watts and is operated on a wavelength of 1000 metres, which is the specified wavelength for wireless beacon stations, and the whole equipment is automatically controlled by a master clock for transmitting groups of interrupted continuous wave (I.C.W.) signals at pre-arranged intervals.