Radio age (Jan 1927-Jan 1928)

RADIO AGE for JulyAugust, 1927 "I have often read your articles," he told me. So Radio Age is known even on the island continent. There was a time when the radio amateur was more often an experimenter than a handler of traffic, but emphasis has been placed on traffic recently and the results are startling. 1BIG, of Augusta, Maine, won a prize offered by the League for the best traffic record for three months. He handled over 1,200 messages, including those originating at his station, those received and delivered by him and those received and relayed. 10C-1BFT of Concord, New Hampshire, a single operator with two transmitters tuned to different wavelengths, handled 1,150. He worked three stations in France, two in Belgium, one in Holland and one in England. In 1926 he took five messages from the McMillan Arctic Expedition, all of them important. This boy, who has reached the mature age of sixteen, started in radio when he was fourteen. In two years he has risen to the position of route manager and official observer of the A. R. R. L. for New Hampshire, and official operator in the Army-Amateur radio net. 1CPR, who was known as W. R. Pierce before he acquired call letters. is one of the few radio amateurs who look at broadcasting as something more than a popular amusement that gets in the way of useful radio activities. He bought a two-tube broadcast receiver and went after a logging record. He reports that he has heard 625 stations in 38 countries, including the United States, and that he has cards or letters from all of them confirming his reception of their programs. These amateurs are showing us how to get out of radio all there is in it. W. T. Grant, who received three cents a day as his wages on his first job and who is selling $40,000,000 worth of radio and other merchandise this year through a chain of more than one hundred stores, says that it is the law of life that anyone who renders a real service to humanity receives an adequate return. This law operates in radio as in other affairs. Those who sit in easy chairs absorbing programs that cost Photo courtesy General Radi< This is the very latest thing in amateur apparatus, a crystal controlled transmitter. Properly installed and fed with 50 watts or less of power, it will probably be heard on all five continents, Australia and the Isles of the sea. someone else as much as $25,000 in an evening become so satisfied and fussy that the enjoyment of it all but vanishes. Also they develop "corporations" of a non-dividend-paying kind. The radio amateur, scrimping to buy the parts for his transmitter and receiver, putting them together with meticulous care, testing them out until they deliver satisfactory results and then using them for handling messages free of charge for anyone who needs the service, knows the joy of living. When the world war broke, the American Radio Relay League furnished 2,500 trained amateur operators for the fighting forces within a few weeks. If the war in China draws us into its deadly grip there are at least five times that number who will enlist at the first call. Many of them are having experience right now in handling Army and Navy traffic, for the Army-Amateur net and the Navy-Amateur chain are maintained for the purpose of training radio amateurs for emergencies. Correspondence courses and training in camps are provided, in addition to daily practice throughout the year. Time after time the amateurs have filled the gap when storms have disrupted wire service. Gifford Grange of Jacksonville saved lives and property during the Miami disaster by keeping radio communication open. Railroads have called on the amateurs for train dispatching and other service when landslides carried away rails and telegraph poles. McMillan's messages from the Arctic have been picked up by amateurs during each expedition and he had to depend on a fifteen-year-old amateur, Arthur Collins, for twenty-two days in 1925 when his expedition was near the Arctic circle and professional radio men were unable to reach him. Dyott, on his recent trip down Roosevelt's River of Doubt in Brazil sent out reports through amateur stations. Less than $100 will equip an amateur station with an efficient shortwave transmitter and receiver. The waves in the 20-, 40 and 80-meter bands carry half way around the world when propagated with a power input of from 20 to 100 watts. Amateur stations using 500 to 1,000 watts are exceptional and many amateurs testify that they do not reach out much if any better than those using 50 watts or less. The short-wave receivers that amateurs use seldom have more than two tubes, which are enough to make low(Continued on page 39)