Radio Service At Lyttelton Heads

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 23, 14 December 1934, Page 30

Radio Service At Lyttelton Heads

Harbour Board Investigates Scheme For Establishing Ship-to-Shore Radio Unit — Little Help Forthcoming From Ship-owners — Mr. A, Selwyn Bruce to Talk on Canterbury Settlement.

NQUIRIDS regarding the possibility of the Lyttelton. Harbour Board installing a ship-to-shore radio-telephone service, show that there is not a sufficiently large number of vessels at present prepared to install sets which could communicate with Lyttelton only to justify the board’s installing the equipment, but it appears that the Government is more sympathetically examining the possibilities of radio-telephony -for coastal shipping, at all events. The original proposal was to install at Lyttelton (preferably at the Heads) a radio telephone which would incorporate a radio direction-giving unit for use in foggy or bad weather. The service would be purely a local service between the Harbour Board and shipping, with, if possible, provision’ for connecting up a vessel at sea near the

Heads with the public telephone exchange. {*ROM the overseas and intercolonial shipping companies, owners ard agents, only one favourable reply had been received, from the Blue Star Company, which stated that its vessels now being equipped or built for the New Zealand trade would be equipped for Wireless telephony, if installed at New Zealand ports. Unfavourable replies were received from the coastal shipping, except Holm and Company, the Canterbury Steam Shipping Company, and the Westport Coal Company, who stated that their vessels would be equipped for radio telephone if the "Government would not insist on fully-certificated Wireless telegraph officers being on board.’

LL other companies or owners had replied that as their vessels were ' equipped for wireless telegraphy, they could not, or would fiot, also install radio-telephones. In the case of the smaller coastal vessels, which are not equipped with wireless, the difficulties seem to be that instruments which could communicate with Lyttelton only would. not be justified; that so long as the Government insisted on the equipment being operated by fully-qualified wireless operators it became prohibitive; that radio-telephony operatable by persons other than fully-qualified wireless operators would be installed by coastal vessels if generally installed at coastal ports by the various harbour boards or by the Government. If a sufficiently large number of vessels would install sets, the Post and Telegraph Department would make provision to work them either from existing coast stations or from new Ones. The wavelength which would be allotted to the Lyttelton Harbour Board’s projected station would be 200 metres. That would not be any value for direction-giving purposes, the wavelength for all direc-tion-finding work being 1000 metres, It would. be possible to operate on dual wave-length of 200 and 1000 metres. It would be for the board to decide whether, in the circumstances, it would make the first move, but if a sufficient number of vessels would install radio telephones, harbour board shore stations at the various ports should be unnecessary, as the service would be catered for by the Government. * N Sunday, December 16, the S4th anniversary of the founding of the province of Canterbury, a stone and tablet will be unveiled at Lyttelton, where the first settlers of the Canterbury Association landed. On Monday evening at nine o'clock, from 8YA, Mr. A. Selwyn Bruce will speak on the anniversary of the Canterbury Settlement, giving the early history of the Christchurch settlement. Mr. Bruce has made a life-long study of the early colonisation of the province, and has written a book on the subject, many of his facts being related by his mother, who arrived in New Zealand in the Sir George Pollock in the montk of November, 1851, his father having arrived the previous May in the _ Issbella Hercus.