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Tangier: Crossroads of Radio By Eugene D. Becken Assistant Vice President and Plant Operations Engineer, RCA Communications, Inc. A TWENTIETH Century electronic marvel is planted today on land where subjects of His Majesty, the Sultan of Morocco, have lived and hunted since the beginning of history. Into this ancient domain in Northwest Africa has come one of the great communications centers of the world — the Tangier radio relay station of RCA Com- munications, Inc., linking the United States directly to twenty major countries, and channeling messages des- tined for nineteen additional nations. Here, partly on its own land and partly on leased public domain known as the Forest of Charf el Aquab, RCA Communications has erected buildings and an- tennas and has installed transmitters, receivers and diesel power generating units to handle messages in all the important tongues of humanity. Lying to the south of the highly disturbed zones rimming the arctic regions, the Tangier station has become the key relay in RCA's world-wide communications system. The station lies sixteen miles to the south of the city of Tangier, a center of 175,000 population near the Straits of Gibraltar. The Riff and Atlas mountains ring the region about 40 to 300 miles to the east and south. Modern Tangier is an international zone whose control is in Moroccan, French, Spanish, British, American, Italian, Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese hands. Its in- habitants represent a sampling of many continents with a wide range of ancient and modern culture and customs. It is a land of free exchange of the world's currencies, no income tax, wonderful climate, and political intrigue. This was the stage on which RCA Communications decided in 1946 to erect its great radio relay station. There were a number of reasons for building such a station and for placing it in Tangier. At the end of World War II, in the period of initial reconstruction, international communication requirements grew steadily, calling for greater volume and reliability of radio cir- cuits. The need for greater volume was met by introduc- tion of the five-unit tape relay system, using teleprinters —• but this innovation further sharpened the need for more reliable circuits. Reasons For Tangier Site Wartime experience had improved knowledge of the behavior of radio waves. It had been determined, for example, that the electrical disturbances frequently inter- fering with the radio paths between New York and points in Europe and the Near and Middle East could be largely avoided by moving the paths farther to the south. However, it was known too that the nearer these paths approached to the equatorial zone, the greater the radio noise encountered. Tangier was selected as a satis- factory technical compromise. Another reason for the selection of Tangier was the need for a relay center where weak radio signals could be restored to their original shape, amplified and trans- mitted onward with a tremendous increase in power. This was especially vital on extremely long circuits, such as those from New York to Bombay and New York to Baghdad. RADIO AGE 27