The Coconino sun., 1917-02-09
MAY HAVE WIRELESS TELEPHONE SYSTEM
 ON TOP 0F SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS

The local forest office has just re- ceived copy of the official report on the wireless system successfully in- stalled at Baseline Ranger Station by forest officers. This station is some 3S miles north of Clifton, Ariz., and in the bottom of deep canyon.
 The report shows detailed drawings and photos of the entire system, the aerial wiring, antennae, inside appa- ratus, etc. The system was installed by Forest Ranger Warner in Novem- ber, 1916, assisted by Ray Potter of Clifton, who has a small wireless sta tion of his own just north of Clifton. Ranger Warner, however, has had no previous experience whatsoever with wireless.
 The serial wire is stretched across the canyon of Blue river, on which the Baseline Ranger station is located, with the antennae some 14s feet above the level of the river. The supply of No. 10 iron wire that was being used ran out and ordinary barbed fence wire was used to complete the aerial line, from cliff to cliff. Copper and iron wire were used for the Head in," from the antennae to the station.
 On the night of Nov. 29, the system was tried out, the first message being sent to Clifton, 3S miles away, to an- other wireless station, and was trans mitted by them to the Western Union who transmitted it to Washington, Portland, Ogden, Denver, San Fran cisco and Missoula.
 The unusual thing about this experi- ment is that Ranger Warner went at the matter an entirely green hand, and used whatever material he had at hand, barbed wire, etc, ordering the main apparatus from a mail order house.
 Since the original installation few of the parts have been replaced with more powerful ones in order to enable the Ranger to receive messages bet ter, and he has been picking up mes sages from the Government Wireless station near Washington, from the Pacific Coast, and even from vessels out at sea. He has also used the system in sending messages to Clifton several times, these messages being forwarded by telegraph to Springer vile and to Silver City, regarding of ficial business.
 Forest officers are very enthusiastic over the possibilities of wireless in handling urgent business, such as re- porting fires from locations now not reached by telephone lines. If a ranger can rig up a system out of berbed wire. and other odds and ends, at total cost of not over s150.00, and with no previous experience in wire less, it would seem, they say, that some inexpensive and serviceable sys- tenn could be readily devised whereby the cost of very expensive pole tele- phone lines could be obviated. Such cases are a wireless across the Grand Canyon, to render communication pos sible between the forest rangers on the south side and the north side of the Canyon, which during the danger ous fire zseason would be extremely advantageous, since the north side of the Canyon is much higher than the south side and overlooks great part of the latter. Another local possibili- ty is the installation of a wireless system from the top of the San Francisco Peaks at Flagstaff or Will Hams, or Jerome, whereby fires de- tected from the Peaks could be im- mediately reported to forest officers on the Coconino, Tusayan, Prescott or Sitgreaves forests-which can not be accomplished now, except by the con- struction of an expensive telephone line.
 Forest officers are now at work on a modification of Ranger Warmers system whereby the system can be worked over into wireless telephony system, which is we'll recognized, has great advantages over the wireless telegraph, since no knowledge of code signals would be necessary. They are very hopeful that such system can be worked out whereby an inexpensive and satisfactory means of communi- cation can be gotten for localities where the construction of a pole tele- phone line would be out of the ques- tion.