Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/38

 No. 18 copper wire, three or four porcelain knob insulators, a screw driver and a pair of pliers, and I was ready for business.

When we were inducted in our hotel, which was to be our home for the next couple of months, I strung the wire lengthwise across the roof, supporting it on the insulators. I brought the free end of the wire down the side of the hotel and into my room which was on the sixth floor. I connected the aerial wire to one of the binding posts of my portable receiver and the other binding post to the water pipe in the bath room. Talk about messages! Why I got them from all over New Jersey when the big stations were working.

Some one told the manager (I’ll bet it was the elevator boy I had had the run-in with the first day I rode up with him) and he nearly spoilt everything, for he made me take the wire down. But I foxed him. I hooked the aerial end to a brass bed and with this arrangement I could get a couple of the nearest big stations, but of course not so clear and loud. Sometimes I could even pick up a coastwise steamer which carried the  apparatus and on two or three occasions I had the