Radio Broadcast (May 1928-Apr 1929)

J A TYPICAL WELLARRANGED AMATEUR STAT10H Removing Nonsense from Short -Wave Transmission THE transmitter described in the last two installments of this series will supply its owner with a considerable amount of pleasure, whether he be experimenter, scientist, engineer, tinker, or friendly "rag-chewer." It is not intended especially for the highly specialized message-handler, but is quite adapted to the uses of that group as well. Just how it may be made to serve these various purposes may be told best after we have pushed aside certain very widespread hoaxes. That it is really necessary to do this can be made plain by recalling that grotesque hearing at Washington wherein a large group of gentlemen demanded all the short waves' — and more — from the Federal Radio Commission. Not only did these representatives have in mind purposes that ranged from worthy to silly, but a goodly proportion of them were filled with the most amazing illusions as to the possibilities of short waves. Surely Mr. Average Citizen is at least as badly off. In order to give him a fair start one must surely equip him with something approaching the truth. The fault lies with the evergreen enthusiasm of the reporter and the fish stories told him by the station owner. Between them they produce an illustrated story about some amateur station which is claimed to "talk to every country in the world and be in touch with Australia every night." (The quotation is genuine.) Probably neither one recognized this as a plain ordinary lie — yet a lie it is. No amateur (or professional) station can "talk to every country in the world" for the good reason that not all countries have stations which can reply. Again, one is perfectly safe in saying that no amateur station in this country has ever maintained daily contact with Australia (or any other foreign country with the exception of Canada or Mexico) for even one year. Any attempt to claim that a shorter demonstration is a proof can be set down as an admission By ROBERT S. KRUSE that the speaker is not familiar with the seasonal and climatic vagaries of short waves. There are many cases on record to show that quite good international amateur contacts may exist for several months, only to disappear completely with no assurance of recurrence twelve months later. International amateur contacts are a postgraduate activity in any case. The beginner may make an occasional contact of this sort but as a rule the signals are weak, the interference is BRASS-pounders, message-handlers, ragchewers — these are terms dear to the heart of all amateurs. In this article Mr. Kruse puts such divisions of the amateur lists into their proper places, and points out that the true experimenter is a combination of all three — and has lots more fun. In the bargain, Mr. Kruse gives some directions about operating the master-oscillator code-andphone transmitter already described by him in Radio Broadcast. — The Editor. strong and the contact at best is fleeting, even with good operating skill. Where a contact is recurrent it is almost invariably due to a schedule, careful hunting and breathless listening — plus some "filling-in" by the receiving operator. Working in that manner certain operators, such as Clifford Himoe, who just returned from the McMillan Greenland Expedition, and Fergus McKeever of Lawrence, Kansas, have accumulated extraordinary strings of "calls-exchanged" and not a few international contacts have persisted for weeks or months. These feats have the same relation to the results obtained by an 1 1 I ordinary operator that Will Rogers' rope spinning has to my attempts — or yours. THE LOW-POWER MYTH AT ONE time there existed a state of nearanarchy in amateur radio, occasioned by the installation of high-power broadly tuned transmitters by those amateurs who could afford them. The rest of the congregation was allowed to sit and' listen. This was combatted by legislation and by a campaign for low-power records. The expected result of such a campaign followed in the form of a low-power cult which was surrounded by as much exaggeration as the international contacts. We read of this or that station which operates a receiving tube (replaced how often?) at 350 volts and is in "constant" (all newspaper radio contacts are constant) communication with amateurs all over the country (even where there are none). Because superb operators like Mason and Waskey maintained Wilkin's lane of communication with sets of the one-mouse-power class we are asked to believe that the range of a battery-driven set using a receiving tube is 500 or 1000 miles. But, nothing is said of the frequent failures, of the painstaking repeat-repeat-repeat, of the nerve-straining listening, and of the weary hours spent in searching for a lost whisper. If, indeed, these tiny transmitters were capable of reliable work over distances, then we must suspect the Western Electric Co. of being very badly informed; a 500-mile transmitter manufactured by this company occupies most of a standard boxcar when it is shipped. It all boils down to this, the range of a shortwave transmitter varies with time, weather, operator's skill, location, interference, and adjustment. The total variation that results is certainly at least as large as 10,000 to 1, and it is quite possible for the same small set to communicate with its antipode with fair signal and