An Exciting "Outside" Broadcast

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 24, 27 December 1929, Page 7

An Exciting "Outside" Broadcast

An Insight into a B.B.C. Relay

With the acceptance of the radio set as an everyday means of domestic entertainment, the listening public are now,demanding the introduction of new features into proerummes. In Bngland this requirement is at present being supplied in the form of surprise items and outside broadcasts. The latter consist of relayed commentaries on important topical happenings, and the success of these broadcasts depends in no small measure on thé ingenuity and resource of the engineers in charge. In the following article, the Director of the B.B.G.’s Outside Broadcast Department gives an interesting insight into some of the experiences and difficulties encountered in conducting a suecessful relay. As an illustration, he gives a vivid description of the efforts made by the engineers of the department to supply listeners with a running commentary on the return of the newly-completed British airship, the R101, from her maiden voyage. Wwe do not enjoy the luxury of working in studios with carefully regulated acoustics in which lines lead from permanently adjusted microphones direct to the control room. Ours the task of collecting programmes from the four corners of the country; our microphones are slung as best they may be in the roofs of cathedrals, the tops of mountains, at the bottom of coal pits, on launches bobbing about the river, even (as on one occasion) in the cabins of aeroplanes in flight; "trunk lines" to the control room are such as the post office can manage to give us, often at very short notice; we work on strange:territory, under conditions where the B.B.C. generally has take second place. But we do see life. One of our greatest problems is that of how best to convey "atmosphere." The background of incidental sound is often a very important part of an outside broadcast; it, so to speak, "places" the programme and stamps it as the genuine article. The microphone is n temperamental creature; one can never be sure exactly what sounds it is going to pick up. But even when it has done its work-and we, through our head-phones at the "control point," can hear each sound perfectly-we are a long way off final success, for between us and the listener are the telephone lines to Savoy Hill (and thence to the London, Daventry, and other transmitters), which may play us false. This is no place for a technical. disSquisition let it suffice to say that for relaying purposes a telephone line must have a certain minimum range of frequencies, must be balanced, and not noisy. ONE of our most trying experiences was in connection with the recent commentary on the return of the R101 to Oardington. ‘The organisation of this broadcast-a very detailed and complicated business-had been completed before the airship had left her shed on the previous Saturday. What a day! To begin with, the lift which runs to the top of the 170ft. mooring mast, overcome, perhaps, by the importance of the occasion, decid-

ed to burn out 4 coil at the very moment when we were about: to. remount the tower for our final test over the lines to London. ‘The airship could be seen hovering in the air a few miles to the south, Squadron-Leader Helmore (the commentator), the engineers and myself had to sprint up 170 feet of spiral staircase! It was three o’clock-the time at which our lines to London was supposed to "come through." The airship was planned to arrive at 4 pm. Both 4 o'clock and the R.101 drew nearer, but our line had as yet not come through. At last we were connected, but the line was so unsatisfactorily "noisy" that we had to abandon all idea of using it. As always, we had a paix of lines at our disposal, a "programme line’ ‘und a "control line" (through which our engineers can. talk to headquarters during the actual relay). When the airship arrived we had to use ‘the control line for the commentary, which meant that until the end of the broadcast we were entirely cut off from London except via the microphone, which, of course, could not be used for liaison work. That line was a traitor of the deepest dye. It obstinately refused to carry all those "atmospheric" sounds which we had reckoned would make such an expressive background. Hven the words of the commentary were distorted and, at moments, lost altogether. The whole of our plan for the relay was rendered useless. We had intended the sounds around the moor-ing-tower to tell their own story-the shouts of the officer in charge of the landing party, the whirr of the electric winch Winding in the airship on its cable, the roar of the engines, etc. As it was, the interval had to be filled up, on the spur of the moment, with semi-technical talk until Major Seott, emerging from the airship (it has a mouth which opens like a shark’s), could come and give his account of the trial. We are, through experience, steeled to most situations -but in this hour of crisis, with the relay going out to the whole Empire, I was in a cold perspiration, while Helmore, pacing to and fro like a cage lionz was a pathetie sight. However, at the critical moment Major Scott appeared and immediately commenced his actount of airship’s maiden voyage, We were saved!