The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-05-28
Amateurs Maintain Network
 Across Entire Country
Every Night From 10 O'Clock Onward They Transmit Wireless Messages While Striving for Long,
 Distance eRecords-Servce Valuable

One of the most remarkable de-
 velopments of radio Is the unique or ganization of amateur wireless oper- ators throughout this country and Canada which nightly engages in q ; nationwide system of telegraph op- eration. It Is known as the Amer ican Radio Relay league and is the only organization of its kind in the world. It covers a very important field In
 the national life and it's possibilities
 in cases of national emergency can
 not be estimated In the event 1 of complete breakdown of country ] wide communication, this body could | carry on quite a considerable portion
 of the nations telegraph business In
 conjunction with the government 3 l network of radio stations.
 1 In it's membership the league has 1 practically every amateur throughout ! the country who has been authorized I to operate a transmitting station un- der the federal laws. These men are forever actuated by desire to ob- tain long distance results. and vie with each other vigorously to attain
 that end It Is this desire which is exerting such a remarka ble influence
 in training the amateurs into very l expert operators, not only in the ac- 1 tual transmission and reception oi messages, but also in the manipufa- : tion of their apparatus, which Is be- ! coming more and more critical in
 these days of continuous wave teleg- raphy.
 |
 Apnateurs Get All the Abuse
 A great deal of undeserved abuse
 has been showered on these amateurs
 by some of the novices who have re-
 gently entered the radio field to i listen to the broadcasted entertain
 mcnt In fact. it has become quite
 the fashion to blame everything that | goes wrong on the amateur. whether i he deserves 1t or not.
 This article is not written in de- fense of the amateur because he l needs none. It is written with the
 sole purnose of bringing to the atten- i tion of the radio public the really im- 1 portant work that is being done by him. In this connection it would mot 1 be amiss to point out that the anna 1 teur voluntarily restricted himself to
 hours of operation. which are de- l signed to interfere least with the broadcast programs. and most of his
 work is now done after 10 o'clock at
 night up to o'clock in the morning. One of the rules recently promul- gated by the league. and announced ! by r. H. Schnell. It's traffic manager,
 reads as follows.
 With the coming of high -class l radiophone broadcasting. we must
 heed the demand of citizens who de- sire to listen to such broadcasts. Con- sideration must be accorded those
 who desire the broadcast service. and 1 our relay work will find It's periods confined 10 the later hours of the night We must not encroach upon the rights of others with out relay message traffic
 Good old Days Have Gone
 "There were times when we could
 start our relay message traffic at any hour of the day or night. but with
 the coming If thousands of new men we had to adopt working schedules whereby each and every one was given chance on radio communica- l tion."
 It Is in this spirit that the volur- teer operators. whoa work steadily