Australian Stations

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 38, 5 April 1929, Page 11

Australian Stations

Greater Power Urged NEw ZEALAND listeners will be interested in the agitation in Australia in favour of increasing the power of the "A" class Commonwealth stations, A writer in the Sydney "Wireless Weekly" says: "Tt must be about eighteen months ago since a Royal Commission sat to inquire into the wireless question in Australia. It made many recommendations, and the report was very comprehensive. The cost of the Commission sitting in the various capital cities must have been considerable, but apparently both time and money were wasted (quite a usual thing with Commonwealth Commissions), as not one single recommendation has been carried out, and country listeners are still not catered for. As Mr. Allsop suggests, 5 k.w. stations have not sufficient range to cover the wide distances, especially as the actual aerial power is not 5 kw.. but, according to the tests made, only 4100 watts. "When the Commission had finished its report we were told that nothing would be done until Mr. Brown returned from the International Radio Conference in U.S.A. He prolonged his absence by many months, remaining in England, and on his return was promptly given a huge increase in salary. The only thing he has done is to announce that the stations are to be taken from private ownership and transferred to Government control and ownership. Listeners, and they are the people who pay, are very much concerned, as Government enterprises generally turn out to bear excessive overhead costs, and are e entually run at a loss. If this happens, both programmes and services will suffer, and certainly improvements will never be made. Ina short time Australia would be further behind than ever in broadeast matters. 50,000 Watts Suggested. AM quite convinced that if, say, one high-power station of 50 k.w. were erected, say, 100 to 150 miles from the coast in each State, many more licenses would result, and people would have the real pleasure of wireless. 'Today one must have a powerful receiver. and even then so many months of the year it is impossible to listen, owing to fading and atmospherics. Curiously enough, yet easy to explain, country listeners use, or try to use, their receivers much more than suburban residents, for the simple reason that they have no other entertainment. Go to any home in the country, at any time of the day, and you will hear the receiver -working, and many listeners do vot know what it is to receive a programme free from disturbance and

fading. They think radio has not developed sufficiently. One day they go to the city or suburbs, and at a friend's house they hear a programme, and ate astounded at the freedom from statfe and fading. Change of Wave-lengths. NOTHER recommendation of the Royal Commission was an im mediate re-allocation of wave-lengths. What has been done? Nothing! A correspondent in the same issue raises the point by quoting the fact that our stations are being interfered with nightly by the heterodyne of Japanese stations. I wrote to the P.M.G. a long time ago, also to 3LO, Melbourne, who passed my letter on to the P.M.G., but from the latter not a word in reply. "T have here two of the latest and most selective six-valve receivers, and it is impossible to cut the whistle out, simply because the wave-length of the Japanese stations is right on the wavelengths of 4QG and 3L0, and also 5CL. After these stations close down, the Japanese come in with a roar, on increasing the volume in the receivers. "The suburbanite can get all he wants from a small 3-valve receiver, which must be selective, but not necessarily sensitive, but the country listener must have a multivalve sensitive receiy. * to get any reception at all, and if he lives on the southern tablelands he has to put up with distortion, fading, and statics. In four years I have not received a single programme after dark without one or all of these troubles. "Now, sir, you and your technical men can render great service by hammering away until Mr. Brown does act, and if only the MJisteners’ League (rather a mysterious body, which hever answers letters). were an active cooperation of all listeners, which would assist you, then we might get something done, and thereby place Austra~ lian radio on the same plane as that of any other country. "As regards programmes, well, that is another story, and I will leave the subject over to another occasion."