Radio Broadcast (Nov 1926-Apr 1927)

552 RADIO BROADCAST APRIL, 1927 T. Crowell, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, who proved to be an excellent skipper. When the radio installation neared completion, tests were carried out daily with radio 2 gy, operated by Radio Broadcast Laboratory in Garden City, Long Island. As soon as these tests were begun, a detailed log was kept of all transmission and reception work. In reviewing this log the following entry appears very conspicuously: "G. E. meter resistor, used as grid leak, opens as plate voltage is increased (to 2200 volts)." The entry was made, shortly after the fireworks and smoke cleared up, by "Dynamite", or, G. V. Dillenback, Jr., a friend who had gone through much similar grief with me at radio station 1 xm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We managed to improvise another grid leak for the transmitter after considerable delay and reestablished connections with 2 gy. Grid leak trouble seemed quite important at the time because of the difficulty in obtaining suitable units in New York or Boston. The entry about the grid leak blowing up was made only three days before the sailing date, June 19th. It was necessary for me to go to Boston and New York before sailing with the expedition, and while I made this trip, "Dynamite" stayed with the ship to clean things up for sailing and do some work tuning up a Conrad antenna (sometimes known as a "Hertz" or a "tuned loop" antenna) which we were experimenting with. I missed what I imagined to be the best part of the trip — the beginning. At the time of sailing, I was in New York, and could not get away for two days. According to schedule, I was to take the Bar Harbor Express Monday night, June 21st, and join the expedition at Bar Harbor, Maine. The Bar Harbor Express does not go quite all the way to Bar Harbor. The trip has to be completed by steamer. There was a strong wind and a moderate sea running Tuesday afternoon when I made this part of the trip. In the distance I could see, from the steamer, what appeared to be two small sailing boats. I could not conceive of any reason for boats of their size being out in such rough weather. As the steamer neared Bar Harbor I could see these two boats coming to anchor in the Harbor. They were the schooners Bowdoin and Sachem! "Dynamite's" report on the first leg of the voyage did not seem encouraging. The interference noises on short waves appeared to be very bad when the engines were running, and he found it difficult to work 2 gy while the ship was under way. The movement of any piece of metal on board seemed to cause static on forty meters. From Bar Harbor to the Arctic and back again, I had to do the worrying about the static alone, for "Dynamite" left the ship and returned to his home in Albany. THE FIRST THREE DAYS AT SEA THE next port of call was to be Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The weather for the first twelve hours out of Bar Harbor was fine — the kind that is too good to last. Before turning to go into Yarmouth, Commander MacMillan radioed the following instructions to us: "Weather so good and night so perfect I think we had better round Cape Sable and go down coast instead of going into Yarmouth. If we become separated. . . ." We rounded Cape Sable, we became separated, and the weather was not so perfect. A moderate sea came up and a thick fog set in. The sea kept getting rougher and the fog thicker. Frequently fishing schooners loomed up through the fog only a short distance away. At times the fog was so thick we could hardly see a hundred feet. We were headed for Sydney, right up at the farthest end of Nova Scotia. At times we ran as close to shore as we dared so that we could pick up the buoys and fog horns but their significance was none too definite until we obtained the navigating data from the Bowdoin. Paul J. McGee, the radio operator on the Bowdoin, frequently had to look up these data himself for us because Commander MacMillan and the mate, Ralph P. Robinson, were more than busy handling the ship with an inexperienced crew on watch. One time, just as I was signing off with wnp, the Bowdoin, I heard an unusual commotion on our deck and a general ringing of engine room signals. I went on deck Circle: Commodore Metcalf despite the fact that he was a long way from home at the time of this pose, finds time to indulge in a genial smile. Above, left: One of the most beautiful sights of the trip was supplied by the almost endless panorama of scintillating floes seen at various intervals of the trip Above, right: Mrs. Metcalf, too, was on the trip — was one of the several women who forsook southern climes in the hope, we suggest, of picking her own sealskin for use in the winter months. Left: This minute craft, not a sister ship to the Leviathan, is the Bowdoin, anchored near Sukkertoppen. She is a seventyfive tonner