Contact!

ireless communication didn't span the globe in the early years. Much experimentation and testing was required to make a signal heard more than a short distance away. As always, the amateurs were at the head of the pack in the quest for better communications.

Eventually transcontinental records were made, and the amateurs began to talk about bridging the Atlantic by wireless in 1901, using tremendous power and long wavelengths. Commercial communications companies not long afterward duplicated the feat, using the same tactics: prodigious power and mile-long antenna systems resembling cross-country distribution lines. Amateurs, on the other hand, were sure it could be done with low power and short wavelengths. The war interfered with their plans, however, and by late 1921 they still had not succeeded. The reason for this, some said, was that European ability was not on a par with that of the American hams.

In February of 1921 the A.R.R.L. sponsored tests in which some two dozen selected American amateurs transmitted prearranged signals. Despite intense interest on both sides of the water the tests failed. So large was the number of English listeners with their regenerative or self-radiating receivers that they jammed each other. No American signals were heard.

A second series of tests was planned for December. This time, in order that no possible deficiencies in British receiving apparatus could imperil their success, the American amateurs decided to send their best qualified member overseas with their own hard-earned funds and with him the best American equipment. Not that the ability of the English was seriously doubted, but--well, they had not succeeded before, and this time the Americans were going to be sure.

This was a big venture for a group of amateurs, with no prospect of material reward. In fact, it has been called "the greatest sporting event in scientific history."

The whole project was carefully planned and executed. Paul F. Godley, probably the foremost receiving expert in America at that time, was chosen for the job. Elaborate arrangements were made with the amateur organizations and radio publications across the water, and "Paragon Paul" (as he was called because of his famous "Paragon" receiver) began hectic, sleepless weeks of building special amplifiers, testing various tuning arrangements and experimenting with different antennas.

On November fifteenth, exhausted from the strain of his preparations, but convinced that his equipment was perfect, Godley sailed from New York on the Aquitania. The night before, at a testimonial dinner given him at the Engineer's Club, a sealed packet containing the secret codes and final schedules for the tests had been handed him.

At noon the great liner was backed out of her berth, and Godley started on the second stage of his remarkable journey. Amid the pandemonium and confusion the radio hams who came down to see Godley off solved the problem of being heard above the din by holding their arms up above the crowd and then opening and closing their hands to form the continental code in heliograph style. They talked to Godley on the boat dock that way for half an hour, rather to the perplexity of the surrounding crowd.

It happened that H.H. Beverage, an engineer of the Radio Corporation of America, also an amateur, was sailing on the same boat. Beverage was discovered leaning over the rail on the same deck, watching the proceedings with great interest. This information was relayed to Godley by "hand radio," and he thereupon walked over to Beverage and introduced himself. Beverage grinned and as he shook hands with Godley with his right hand he formed a nonchalant "OK" with his left. The two kindred spirits thereafter spent the greater part of the voyage together.

This kind of spirit followed Godley throughout his trip. Radiograms from amateurs which reached him on shipboard were filled with it. "At no time had I viewed the trip as anything even remotely approaching a lark, for there were sacrifices which had to be made," he said later. "But it was these radiograms, each bubbling over with sincerity and a will for success, that first brought home to me the extent to which all those eyes reddened by long watches on the relay routes must be following me."

A month, lacking only a few days, went by. Paul Godley arrived in England and was royally feted in London. He set up his apparatus for preliminary tests but found conditions in the city wholly unsatisfactory. Then he traveled to Scotland in search of a suitable location on the moors near Androssan.

The weather was abominable; the temperature hovered close to freezing, and there was a chilling fog. After hours of tramping the beaches in rain and wet he finally located two sites that seemed favorable. But when he returned at high tide they were almost completely covered with water.

There were other disheartening experiences, but at last, in the midst of an overpowering downpour, a satisfactory field was found.

Time was growing very short, for days had been spent searching for a suitable site. At noon of the day preceding the opening of the tests huge bundles of gear, together with a tent, storage batteries, trunks, floor boards and poles for the antenna, were hauled onto this field in a one-horse wagon. The ten antenna poles were scattered down the field at 125-foot intervals. Floor boards were spread on the ground, and the trunks and paraphernalia placed on them. A laborer began digging holes for the poles, and Godley and two others started erecting the tent. They had just nicely raised it into position when a gust of wind lifted the whole affair and carried it away, ending operations for that day.

The following day additional labor was enlisted. The weather was warmer, with high winds and driving rain. By noon the rain had slackened to a drizzle. The tent was erected, and the side walls were up. Darkness found the antenna poles installed, and the wire, a phosphor bronze strand twelve hundred feet long, was strung. Godley, together with Pearson, the official checking operator, and the two laborers, continued to work after dark, burying ground plates four and one half feet deep in the wet, sandy soil.

Godley and Pearson returned to the hotel for a late supper and then resumed their preparations in the big tent. Working by lantern light, a table was improvised of boards and trestles. Boxes became chairs, and an apparatus trunk served as a back rest for the operator. Tubes, accesories, high-tension battery--all were unpacked and connected in place.

Outside the tent the rain beat down relentlessly. A small oilstove inside did its best to provide warmth but it struggled against heavy odds.

By 11:30 P.M. the three-thousand-meter amplifier, to be used in conjunction with the superheterodyne receiver, was functioning, and station FL in Paris was picked up with no antenna connection. At midnight time signals from POZ in Nauen were used to check the timepieces.

Godley's log picks up the story:

". . . By about 1 A.M. we were on Beverage wire and feeling for short-wave signals and picking up harmonics from FL's spark and many high-powered continuous-wave stations, although harmonics much less severe than near London, with the exception of Clifden-Ireland's which are very strong.

"At 1:33 A.M. picked up a sixty-cycle synchronous spark at about 270 meters chewing rag. Adjusted for him and was able to hear him say, 'CUL,' and sign off what we took to be 1AEP, but atmospherics made sign doubtful. That this was an American ham there was no doubt! I was greatly elated and felt very confident that we would soon be hearing many others! Chill winds and cold rains, wet clothes and the discouraging vision of long vigils under the most trying conditions were forgotten amidst the overwhelming joy of the moment--a joy which I was struggling to hold within! I suggested hot coffee at once, and Pearson volunteered to warm it on our stove. He had a pot and bottle in his hands when I called sharply to him to resume watch! Our welcome American friend was at it again with a short call for an eight district station! His signal had doubled in strength, and he was booming through the heavy static and signed off clearly 1AAW at 1:42 A.M.!"

The thing had been done. An American amateur station had been heard across the Atlantic Ocean!

Actually, this was not an official reception since, the tests had not formally begun. It was not until 12:50 A.M. on the morning of December tenth--twenty-four hours later--that Godley heard the first official amateur transmission from 1BCG, an elaborate special station set up for the tests at Greenwich, Conn., by half a dozen New York amateurs led by Major Edwin H. Armstrong, working as a unit.

Before the tests were over Godley heard the signals of more than thirty other American amateur stations. For ten bitter cold and rainy days he made his home in that drafty tent, headphones glued to his ears and fingers taut on the dials of his receiver, usually with just one official witness at his side, while the twenty-seven stations transmitted during the reserved periods and every American amateur who could get a set on the air shot signals at him during the open time.

The thought of a warm corner by the open fire in the lounge of the hotel was strongly tempting at times when the wind whistled through the tent walls at Godley's feet and blew down in gusts around his head. But he carried on until the triumphant end of the tests, logging new signals every night. That amateur signals transmitted with the meager maximum power of one kilowatt on the despised wavelength of two hundred meters could be successfully received across the Atlantic Ocean had been demonstrated for all time. The A.R.R.L.'s transatlantic message bill, incurred in obtaining daily reports of the tests, proved that. Arrangements had been made for representitives in each country to cable collect a daily report of each American amateur station heard and the foreign station that had reported it. So many European amateurs reported that the bill was nineteen hundred dollars!

Godley returned to America on the Olympic on December twenty-eight, a conquering hero. "His niche in the Radio Hall of Fame is secure forever," said QST.