(Royal Canadian Air Force)
EDMONTON, Alta, Sept. 21 - The most powerful system of radio telegraph and telephone communications ever established by the Royal Canadian Air Force is now nearing completion on the North West Staging Route between Edmonton and Whitehorse, It has been built for
the purpose of providing several alternative means of communication between air bases which handle the immense amount of air traffic flying over the route, now the busiest
airline in Canada, and to ensure that the R.C.A.F.'s system of traffic control on that airline is as near fool-proof as it is humanly possible to make it.
The vast radio network, which is costing several hundreds of thousands of dollars to install, includes a number of transmitters which are many times more powerful than the average commercial radio station, and are the biggest yet to go into service with the R.C.A.F. Over its many alternative channels, the R.C.A.F. control officers in the traffic centre of the Edmonton city airport will handle air traffic at bases as far away as Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, over 1,000 miles from Edmonton. The channels include
radio-telephone communication between ground stations and aircraft flying over the route.
So many alternative methods of communication have been installed that in the opinion of the R.C.A.F. officials, nothing "short of a major catastrophe like an earthquake" could sever all the lines of the network simultaneously. At Edmonton and the other main stations of the oute, 150-foot steel masts are now being erected; they will carry the antennae uf the powerful transmitters through which the 24-hours-a-day flow of message traffic will pass.
In the signals section of North West Air Command in Edmonton and other bases on Staging Route, dozens of R.C.A.F. men and women wireless, radio-telephone and tele-printer operators maintain a 24-hour watch and handle the ceaseless flow of operational and administrative messages which keep the R.C.A.F. officials constantly informed of the movements of aircraft over the Route.
Installation of the first R.C.A.F. communications system over the route began in November, 1943, and by Christmas, low-powered, high-frequency transmitters had been installed as far north as Fort St. John, B. C., about mid-way between Whitehorse and Edmonton. By February, the one-channel network was complete as far as Whitehorse.
Construction of the stations which made up the network was helped by an exceptionally mild winter, but there were plenty of head-aches nevertheless. Constant construction work meant that bull-dozers were always being employed around the statons down the Staging Route, and R.C.A.F. trouble-shooting crews were frequently being called out to repair underground cables leading to transmitters which had been ploughed up by bull-dozers. But despite these interruptions the network was never off the air for more
than a few hours at a stretch.
The new multi-channel system has so many alternatives, that, even if one network goes off the air altogether, communication can still go on unhampered. Immediate military military ends are the chief reasons for its installation now, but when the war is over and the North West Staging Route becomes one of the world's great peace time arterial airways, this vast radio network, built by the R.C.A.F. to increase its contribution to the United Nations' war machine, will become a major factor in the security of civilian air transportation.
