Radio Broadcast (Nov 1923-Apr 1924)

Is the Amateur at Fault? 295 may have prejudiced him against the amateurs. This prejudice may easily be shared by a majority of the Congress. What then? Justice is a very relative and elastic term, and one is too apt to get it after one is dead. SUGGESTIONS FOR REDUCING TELEGRAPH INTERFERENCE IF THESE points are conceded, specific suggestions for reform are in order. Without going into the matter exhaustively, we may enumerate four, as follows: 1 . Use of artificial antennas for testing. 2. Technical restrictions on C. W. as well as spark sets. 3. Establishment of a reduced-power rule for local communication. 4. Reforms in calling and traffic handling. The carelessness, amounting almost to profligacy, of the American code amateur is illustrated by this single observation — it is next to impossible to find one who owns, or who has ever owned, an artificial antenna, which permits testing a transmitter without radiating. Instead, practically all amateur testing is done on the air. If I had a tenspot for every time one amateur has asked another, " How is my spark?" or, " How do you like this note?" I should be in a position to pay the German debt, and have enough left over to relieve me from the necessity of following radio for a living. Let us concede that many receiving sets are not all they should be, that their owners are inexpert in the operations of tuning, that the amateurs are blamed for much interference of which they are innocent— conceding all this, why should an experimenter be allowed to use the air for endless tests? The air should be used for communication. Most tests can be performed privately. An artificial aerial and a receiving set will tell Brother Jones that his new chopper gives a note like a rasp in difficulties with a piece of battleship steel, without an inquiry dispatched to Brother Smith across the city. The same remark applies to Brother Brown's telephone set, which transmits a band of frequencies from 400 to 1000, so that Brown could not understand himself talk if he did not know what he wanted to say. Brown should not attempt to talk to Smith with this set; he should have Smith come to his home and listen to it on an artificial antenna, just as he would, in simple charity, keep the windows closed while he was learning to play the oboe. If the air were reserved for communication; and if only such tests as actually require a distant listener, or a wavelength setting on a particular aerial, were permitted on a radiating antenna, and if this rule were applied to amateurs as it is applied to commercial stations, an immense gain in freedom from interference could be realized. C. W. TRANSMITTERS NOT ABOVE REPROACH UNDER the second head, it is in order to question the current belief that C. W. transmitters do not cause interference. This is true only relatively in any case, and for directcurrent plate feed, and when the radiation is unmodulated, and, finally, when "key transients" are suppressed. At present there are regulations covering the emission of a pure and sharp wave from commercial stations, but these are not enforced in the case of amateurs, because in the earlier state of the art, as long as the amateurs stayed down around 200 meters they were not apt to interfere with commercial traffic, and the radio inspection service had all it could do to regulate marine radio. Since the advent of broadcasting, conditions have changed, so that it is only a matter of time when amateur as well as commercial stations will be subjected to technical regulations. The paramount consideration, now as before, is the protection of life and property at sea. Broads casting has added a secondary but important consideration — the elimination of interference on broadcasting wavelengths. This will involve restrictions on amateur tube transmitters, as well as on spark sets, and, just as the commercial interests were able to agree on fair and practicable standards for spark transmitters in 1912, it will, before long, be in order for the amateurs, and the other interests involved, to agree on proper technical standards for amateur transmitting sets, in common with other sending stations. The prevalent notion that an amateur has done his whole duty when he has put in a tube transmitter and does not exceed the upper wavelength limit for his class, and stays of? the air between 8.00 and 10.30, will not, I believe, stand the test of time. My final criticism, calling for reforms in calling and traffic handling, applies to a great many amateurs — to a majority, I think —