Radio Broadcast (Nov 1923-Apr 1924)

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Is the Amateur at Fault? By CARL DREHER 1H0PE the spirit of this article will not be taken as one of "A plague on both your houses" — the houses referred to being not those of Capulet and Montague, but those of the broadcast listener and the telegraph amateur. I grew up as a radio telegraph amateur, myself, and it is now my fortune to cater, professionally, to the broadcast listener. 1 am in a position, I believe, to know both factions and to view their differences with an impartial eye. Neither party is without faults; or, to be accurate/ each class contains individuals who have more radio faults than a regenerative set has squeals. A frank analysis of these members of the groups will, I feel, be in the interest of the radio art as a whole. When seventeen years ago I listened, wonderstricken, to my first wireless signals, the art was at a sort of scientific frontier. Like other pioneers, we suffered somewhat from loneliness and hardships, self-inflicted, to be sure, but none the less poignant. Signals were few and we were ignorant as to the proper procedure to follow in receiving those few, so that an amateur would sometimes listen for weeks without hearing anything. Yet he would listen for hours every day, holding his breath a good part of the time, in the hope of hearing a few dots and dashes. When a silicon crystal jarred out of adjustment in the middle of a message the owner would be plunged into despair, for he was not likely to get it into adjustment again that night. When he hit a sensitive spot in his explorations there was no signal on the air nineteen chances out of twenty; and when someone was sending it was a fair bet that the sensitive area would be passed over, for the crystal was apt to be about as good as a piece of anthracite. Some of the boys did use coal, as a matter of fact. Long before this time, even, experimenters were using an electrophorus to make a spark in one room of a house, and listening on a telephone receiver connected across an autocoherer, consisting of a needle laid across two pencil leads, in another room; and that was radio. It had one salient advantage — every one did what he pleased without bothering any one else. The frontier, in other words. My friendly indictment of the present telegraph amateurs is that some of them seem to think that they are still in that state. THE BOY THAT SITS ON THE KEY FOR example, I happen to live in New York City, near three or four amateurs with C. W. transmitters. My business makes it necessary for me to listen-in on broadcasting wavelengths, almost all evening and practically every evening. I have a wave-trap to take care of these amateurs; still, as they are very near me, enough stuff gets through to interfere with reception, sometimes even to limit out the broadcasting stations in my receiver. (The transmitters are fed on AC, I may remark, quite imperfectly filtered, and with prominent key thumps). Anyway, between 8:00 and 10:30 in the evening these transmitters are supposed to be off the air. Sure enough, they are not used for signaling during these intervals, but not infrequently one of the boys holds down his key for a minute, presumably to test radiation, and then stops without signing. A natural enough procedure — my friend gets an idea for squeezing another eighth of an ampere out of his set, and of course he has to try it right away. Why wait until 10:30? In 1906, or 19 1 2, or even in 1920, there would have been no harm at all. But to-day our careless friend interferes with twenty or thirty broadcast listeners in the surrounding apartment houses when he touches his key at this time. Instead of music, they get a loud 60 The author makes a plea for tolerance and common sense in the relations of amateur and "B C L" toward one another. In this article, he takes the radio amateur to task for the interference he sometimes creates with his spark or continuous-wave transmitter; but the severity of his criticism is tempered with constructive suggestions and with a sympathetic understanding of the amateur's point of view. Next month, Mr. Dreher will put the broadcast listener on the carpet. — The Editor.