...SO RADIO DAILY SPINS ITS WEB

Radio Record, 18 March 1938, Page 10

...SO RADIO DAILY

SPINS ITS WEB

By

WILL

GRAVE

IN AIR AND ON SEA, MEN LISTEN FOR ITS VOICE

"THE invisibie web of radio that is spun from New Zealand by the men in the service of the radio engineering department of the Post Office guides the airman on his daily flights, stretches its filaments all over the South Pacific, and reaches across the globe to London and the Atlantic. The log books of the radio service men in themselves, as they talk to ships and planes, tell a cryptic story that is one of the most romantic in the pages of New Zealand’s 20th century history.

AINTED the usual nondescript official colour, there is a small wooden building on one of the draughtiest spots in Wellington near Lambton Quay. But, somehow, it seefns right that the air about that unimpressive place should be particularly restless. Perhaps it is only getting a little of its revenge on the people who live jnside it.

Tor the small wooden building is the headquarters of the men in New Zealand who have organised the services which give no peace to the atmosphere; who use it to send their radio telephone messages, via Sydney, to London, to talk from New Zealand by radio telegraphy to the Queen Mary, midway on her Atlantic crossing, to chat with ships and remote Pacific islands, to carry messages to isolated parts of New Zealand, to guide airmen on their flights up and down the country and crossing the Tasman. It seemed only poetic justice that an atmosphere that had been made into the slave of its masters should now and then buffet the building which houses the radio engineering department of the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department. Though nothing to look at, the radio engineering building might easily become the most important building in the country. Already it is playing a part in the lives of New Zealanders that is growing steadily in value every day, 7 TRNHE plantation manager in Samoa, who wants to send word to London to sell his copra that day on the London market strolls in to the Island Post Office, where the palms outside the building themselvyés seem to glisten wet With the heat. His message is flashed by radio ove? ihe | seas to New Zealand, through the organising work of men in the dingy official building in Wellington, is sent on by. cable to London, Bo , _* The eommercial aviator flying blind in the elouds above the great. white Kaikoura range speaks. in: his tslephone, gets contact with a-station of . the radio

engineering men, checks up on his position, and the weather ahead of him and behind him, checks up: on times, gathers data, ‘whieh safeguards the lives of the people he carries with him. The tourist in Milford Sound who wants to book his sailing berth a week: earlier in Auckland isn’t cut . off -because there happen to be no

feresraph lines and no telephone lines, He sends the message through the Post Office radio in Milford. HEN his ship is foundering in a heavy sea oft the New Zealand coast and the captain orders. his radio operator to seud an SOS, he knows that there will be a man listening day and night in the coast radio stations, listening for urgent calls from ships. A trawler skipper in Cook Strait who knows no», Morse can keep in touch with the shore by his ship’s ! telephone installation just as easily as the young wife ' just parted from her husband can ring up Whangarei from the middle of the Tasman in the Awatea. If there is some catastrophe of Nature that wrecks and isolates a whole New Zealand community so that telegraph lines and telephone lines are twisted out of their usefulness and roads are blocked and made impassable, there is a special radio service that is tested every month by the department and ready to deal with just such:an emergency-so that medical supplies may be sent, and food, and, above all, so that news might be given and got in return. . st, These are some of the things that are done by the radio department of the service. oo [Tt is radio, too, that keeps New Zealand in touch with its main dependencies in the Pacific. There are no cable routes to Western Samoa and the Cook Islands group. ‘The long intangible filament of radio links: them up with New Zealand. . ‘

Around each central Pacific station is a whole web of radio communications from its own near-by islands. Messages from the outlying islands are radioed to the central station, the central station radios them to New Zeaand. This radio web is spun alt round the’ southern Pacific. It links up the Cook Islands, Papeete, Niue Island, Nukulofa in the Tongan group, and the Chatham Islands. .The latest service to be linked up is on Raoul Island in the Kermadecs. HERE are even places within the Dominion itself which have their only contact with the outer world through radio. Many of them are the lighthouse stations. It is by radio alone that messages go to the men in the lonely places of Portland Island in Hawke’s Bay, Stephens Island in Cook Strait, Puysegur Point south of Milford, Great Mercury Island in.the Bay of Vlenty, Jackson’s Bay in South Westland, and to Milford Sound. All these stations work in to one of the three main Post Office stations at Auckland, Wellington or Awarua

in the south. ‘Though there are no telegraph lines, the traveller can send his telegram from Milford Sound. It goes by radio. Through the radio telephone, people in New Zealand talk, via Sydney. with London. The. Dominion meteoro-

logists gather the data for their forecasts largely by radio. Certain trawlers in Cook Strait have radio 'telephones installed with which they can talk to the land. Passengers on ships get their New Zealand news from the Post Office radio. Some cargo ship carrying no doctor, or with a patient suffering from a baffling complaint, sends out an XXX message. It is an urgent call-it takes precedence over all calls but the SOS. Through the ageney of the Post Officé radio coast station the ship can get medical advice for the treatment of its patient. HE radio service to ships and airways to-day is vue of radio’s most fascinating developments. One can piece the romantic tale. together from the logs of the department's radio operators. As he sits at his control table, the operator jots down on his log a summary of the doings of the radio world of the sea. In his log he writes : , 0.2 am Cq Vib whr which means that at two minutes past 12 midnight... Bris bane (Vib) broadcast the weather for shipping (whro.- to Cq (all stations). . He may write in his log that at "0.4 zmer ympt R qru gm," which means that at four minutes past midnight he heard the Matangi (zmpt) say to the Arahura (zmecr) iu Cook Strait: "Received your message (R): I have nothing for you (qru); good-morning (gm)." ‘It may sound a trivial thing to record in the leg; yet it might be worth many lives to have on record that, at a certain time, those two ships were talking at a certain position in Cook Strait. 1A ND one can find this in the log book: §.15 p.m. zlib gbtt ar. And this simply means that at 8.15 p.m. N.Z. time the Queen Mary (gbtt) on her voyage across the Atlantic called station Akarua, New Zealand (zlb), and said: "Are you there; New Zealand? Have you anything for me?" The auswer is in the log book on the next line: . ° 8.15 pam. gbtt zlb nil KK. . which is the radio operator’s way of saying that Avwarua, New Zealand. (zlb) then called the Queen Mary ¢gbtt) and said: "T have nothing for you; Go ahead." (Cont. on'p. 35.)

Radio Spins Its Web ; (Continued from page i1.)

I just the same way as the Post Office radio looks after the ships at sea, it looks after the safety of the new ships of the air, The past two years has been a period of mushroom growth of the New Zealand commercial air services. And as each plane wings its way up and down and across New: Zealand its progress is followed by the special air radio services. There are now special Post Office radio stations at Mangere (Auckland), Bell Block (New Plymouth), Milson (Palmerston North), Wellington, Blenheim, Nelson, Greymouth, Hokitika, Jackson’s Bay, Christchurch and Taieri (Dunedin), and installations are now being made at Gisborne and Napfer. In each of these stations highly trained operators keep in regular contact with each commercial plane, either by radio telephony or radio telegraphy, as it flies through the air. At the same time, each station keeps in touch with the next aerodrome on the plane’s route for the exchange: of ‘"‘departure-and-arrival" information and meteorological data.. ‘Hach station is ready to provide aids to aerial navigation and landing aids in thick weather, At the present time the Post Office is making plans for the installation of direction-finding equipment and approach beacons at all aerodromes in New Zea-

— The air radio man, too, keeps his log book. He writes down all the information that he finds in the air. He writes: Afe quad 815 Jones and Jones 3 Nu 3 Pm, 4 Wn, vac 1 Nu Pm, 5 Pm Wn, which means that plane AFH left at 8.15 with Jones and Jones ag pilots with three passengers for New Ply‘mouth, 3 for Palmerston North and four for Wellington, and vacancies for one passenger from New Plymouth to Palmerston North, and for 5 passengers from Palmerston North to Wellington, It is as fascinating as it is simple, this terse dialect of the air, All this expansion of the air has meant heavy pressure on the resources of the radio engineering staff of the Post Office. In the last two years, the radio department has had to supply 25 highly trained operators for the air radio stations. The men chosen have to be first-class. operators, temperamentally suited to the work, with a special knowledge of the operation and adjustment of their equipment. The operator may have three planes in the air above him at the ‘Same moment, he may have to switch on his approach beam in wet weather, give a bearing, ring the aerodrome office and keep his point to point ground contacts, And the early establishment of trans"Tasman and trans-Pacifie air services is going to make further exacting demands on the Post Office radio engineers, That small dingy building may -be an ugly duckling to look at, but there is a golden note in its voice to the airmen and the men of the sea.