Aeronautical Radio Inc.

(See front cover)

The faster and stronger airplanes become, the further they can fly and the heavier the weather they can endure, the more obviously necessary to them becomes Radio. It was not insignificant that the first plane to cross the Atlantic westward on a nonstop flight from one airport to another, found its way through Newfoundland fogs and magnetic disturbances almost entirely by radio. The Bremen, only plane preceding the Southern Cross, had no radio and was lucky to strike land where it did at Greenley Island.

Communication between plane and ground is a task which has been absorbing the best efforts of government and commercial aeronautics men, their main problem having been to build durable transmitters light enough.' Success was brilliantly demonstrated to laymen last week when Capt. Lewis A. Yancey and Radioman Zeh Bouck communicated for an hour by their airplane radio in Buenos Aires, with the New York Times office 5,838 mi. away.

Radio has been the basic feature of most recent aids to avigation--range-finders, compasses, fog "eyes" and the like.

Early to recognize aviation's dependence upon communication, the aeronautics bureau of the Department of Commerce has required two-way radio equipment on all transport ships engaged in interstate passenger traffic. The Government provides radio beacons and weather broadcasts. But means for two-way conversations must be supplied by the transport lines themselves.

The individual transport companies had not gone far in their experimentation and practice when the need for coordination became evident. There was costly duplication of ground equipment and labor. There was a variety of practices which threatened to confound the interstate flyer of the future. Moreover, a central administrator was needed to conserve the few frequency channels assigned by the Federal Radio Commission to air transport operators.

Out of these needs has now grown Aeronautical Radio Inc., a nonprofit company supported by the airlines to administer their radio operations much as (for profit) Radio Corp. serves U. S. steamships and Marconi serves British steamships. At the head of Aeronautical Radio Inc. is an able engineering son of an able engineering father: Herbert Clark Hoover Jr., 26.

Young Mr. Hoover began tinkering with radio sets when he was 14. Never ceasing to be his hobby, radio became his career. He studied it at Stanford University, kept abreast of its progress during his graduate years at Harvard. After making a survey of aviation economics under a fellowship of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund, he perceived and took radio work for his own cross section of the air industry.

A year and one-half ago Engineer Hoover Jr. was engaged by Western Air Express to set up its communications system. Starting with three small stations between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, he now directs a network of 27 stations spread over western U. S., guiding radio-equipped planes along 15,000 mi. of airways. His staff numbers 75 engineers, researchers, operators, maintenance men. On his advice, Western Air bought $200,000 worth of airplane radio equipment. From communications chief he was last month promoted to chief engineer of the company (TIME, June 23).

Although he enjoys flying and his work requires much of it, Engineer Hoover Jr. is essentially a radioman. Not all his flights have ended happily. Once a trailing antenna fouled a telegraph wire, spilled his plane on its nose.

He works hard from 8:30 to 5:30, usually at the Western Air field at Alhambra, Calif., sometimes at the company headquarters in Los Angeles where he shares an office with two others. His fellows like him for his affability, attribute his apparent diffidence to his partial deafness. He drives a Chrysler car to and from Pasadena, where he lives with his wife, the former Margaret Watson, and their three children. A facile writer, he types his own copy for Aero Digest, for which he is radio editor and a monthly contributor.

As its president, Engineer Hoover Jr. will serve Aeronautical Radio Inc. in advisory capacity. The bulk of the work falls to Executive Vice President Paul Goldsborough, formerly vice president of Universal Aviation Corp., with headquarters in Washington. Other officers: Thorp Hiscock of Boeing Air Transport, vice president; H. C. Leuteritz of Pan American Airways, secretary-treasurer.

Represented in the company are Western Air, Boeing, American Airways (all Aviation Corp. transport lines). Pan-American and Curtiss-Wright have agreed to participate. National Air Transport, T. A. T., Safeway, and Eastern Air Transport are expected to join soon.

Each line leases its ground equipment to Aeronautical Radio Inc. for operation At important junctions like Chicago, Tulsa, Kansas City, the ground stations now maintained by the several lines converging there, will be merged into union stations.

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