Page:March 1916 QST.djvu/6

MARCH, 1916 PRACTICAL RELAYING By Hiram Percy Maxim.

(Continued from February Number.)

N the February QST, the writer covered broadly a plan for establishing six main Trunk Lines to cover the country. He did not intend in this plan to present a final arrangement, because it did not seem possible from the information at hand to layout the best points. It seems, however, that the scheme has caught on, if the numbers of letters received from amateur station owners in various parts of the country mean anything. For this reason, the Trunk Lines A, B, C, D, E and F will be assumed as good enough to start with.

&emsp;The next step to take is to establish local headquarters for each Trunk Line, and to turn over to these headquarters the work of organizing each Trunk Line. In order to intelligently decide upon these different local Headquarters, several things must be given consideration. For example, it would seem that a city forming a junction point for two or even three Trunk Lines, should be Headquarters, because a test message could be started simultaneously from this point, and go out over, the several Trunk Lines. Take Chicago as an illustration. Chicago is approximately the central, point on Trunk Line A, and it is the starting point for Trunk Line E. A test message starting from Chicago could go west to Seattle, the end of Trunk Line A, east to Portland, Maine, the other end and southwest to Los Angeles the end of Trunk Line E. One job done at Chicago, would thus cover the entire width of the country at the north and also cover a line down the Mississippi to the Gulf and across the southern border to the Coast.

&emsp;Philadelphia or some point in New Jersey would likewise be a good location to act as Headquarters for the entire eastern section of the country. One test message sent out from here would be carried northeast through New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, south through the Atlantic States to Jacksonville, Florida, and southwest on Trunk Line D through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, to New Orleans, La.

&emsp;These two Headquarters would therefore cover the whole of Trunk Lines A, E, C and D. This leaves only B, running west from St. Louis, and F running north and south from Vancouver to San Diego, on the Pacific Coast. San Francisco is the natural location for the Headquarters for both these lines. One message sent out would run north to Vancouver, south to San Diego and east to St. Louis.

&emsp;Thus it seems plain that three cities, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia, or some point between this city and New York, would be all the District Headquarters, necessary to carry on a practical system of test traffic which would cover the entire country, entering almost every single state in the Union.

&emsp;The delicate question of selecting the most suitable station for these Headquarters then arises. Several details must be taken into account in selecting these headquarters. First, there is the necessity for systematic handling of the job. Some people are so constituted that they naturally handle a piece of work in a systematic manner, and records are simple and always kept. Other people entirely lack anything appreaching order and system and if one of these should be a District Headquarters, things would go haphazard, hit and miss, and interest would quickly die out on all of the lines which they had charge of.

&emsp;Another requisite for these district headquarters is the facility for writing letters and looking after the stations which wrote to them. Some amateurs who are in business have letter writing facilities of an office and it is very little work to get off half a dozen letters once in a while. A station owner so situated that letter writing was convenient and easy would be a better Headquarters than one who had not these facilities, other things being equal.

&emsp;Another requisite, and an important one, as we all know, is the ability to always be on the job at the time specified, or never fail to have some one else if he cannot be there himself. This failure to keep regular hours is the greatest fault we amateurs have, and, is the great big factor which limits our radio relaying work. Tom is never on when Dick and Harry are on, and Dick seems to make a point of going, to the movies when Tom and Harry most need him. Harry invariably reserves his off night for the time when Tom and Dick depend upon him being at his instruments. In handling test and regular messages, this point must be most carefully considered, and a Headquarters must be selected who can either be on regularly or have other stations who will act for him when he is absent. The nights when the through Trunk Line work is to be done, should not be too often. Three nights a week would probably be impractical and the writer believes that one night a week would be better than 