Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/51

 “You kids,” he said, pointing his long bony finger at my right eye, “make life a nightmare for us professionals. Every kid that knows how to splice a wire seems to be crazy to send messages. Ninety-nine out of a hundred know nothing of wireless and their signals are simply a jumble of sparks.

“A kid has no business learning wireless at all. I can tune out amateur low power stations, but they are always breaking in in the middle of a message. I haven’t got any use for a wireless kid. So hotfoot it and don’t hang around here any more.”

This was too much for even a fellow with a cast-iron nerve like mine, so I turned on my heel, said sore-head under my breath and took a walk on the promenade deck. He was the first professional operator I had ever met and I was certainly disappointed in the way he treated a brother operator. I wondered then if all professional operators had his kind of a grouch and if so, I didn’t want to be one of them.

Not to be out-generaled I thought I’d try one more scheme and that was to use a couple of pieces of wire five or six feet long for the aerial and ground, hook them on to the detector of