"I won"t try to deny it," said the other, emphatically. "The more I think about it, the more wonderful it seems. Besides, it"s got a mighty practical side to it. I was holding on to some shares a few days ago until I learned by way of the radio that they were starting to fall. I sent a telegram to my brokers, they sold out for me just in the nick of time, and I made a profit on the deal instead of having to take a loss. The bottom dropped clean out of the market that same afternoon, and if I"d been holding on to those shares, I would have gotten b.u.mped good and hard."
The other nodded. "It"s a good investment when you look at it that way," he admitted.
"Good investment is right," declared his partner. "I saved a lot more in that deal than the whole radio outfit cost me, and I still own the set."
"I wonder why the new government wireless station doesn"t do something of the kind," remarked Mr. Blackford. "They might as well make themselves useful as well as ornamental."
"Government station!" exclaimed Bob and Joe at once. "Is there a government station at Mountain Pa.s.s?"
Mr. Blackford nodded. "I thought you fellows knew about it, or I"d have mentioned it before," he said. "It was just opened a few weeks ago, and I don"t think they"ve got all their equipment in yet. There"s been some delay in getting the stuff here, I understand."
"What does the government want of a wireless station away up here?"
asked Bob.
"This is the highest point in all the surrounding country and makes an ideal lookout for forest fires," said his informant. "The station was supposed to be ready for use last summer, but, as I say, was delayed a good deal. But we expect it to be of great service in the future.
There have been some disastrous forest fires around here in the last few years, as you probably know."
"We ought, to know it," remarked Joe. "The smoke has been so thick as far away as Clintonia sometimes that you could cut it with a hatchet.
It"s about time something was done to stop it."
Of course, once they heard about the government station, the boys could think of nothing else until they had visited it. Bob proposed that they go right after lunch, and this met with the enthusiastic approval of his friends. Poor Jimmy was so rushed by his eager friends that he was frustrated in his design of asking for a second helping of chocolate pudding, and was hurried away protesting vainly against such unseemly haste.
"What do you Indians think you"re doing?" he grumbled. "Do you all want to die of indigestion? Don"t you know you"re supposed to rest after a meal and give your stomach a chance?"
"Oh, dry up," said Joe, heartlessly. "If you didn"t eat so much you wouldn"t want to lie around for two hours after every meal like a Brazilian anaconda. You know you didn"t want another plate of that pudding, anyway."
"Didn"t I!" said Jimmy, disconsolately. "That was about the best pudding I ever tasted, bar none. You fellows are such radio bugs that you can"t even pay proper attention to what you"re eating."
"You give enough attention to that to make up for the whole gang,"
said Bob. "Stop your growling and step along lively, old timer."
Jimmy grumbled a little more in spite of this admonition, but regained his usual cheery mood when he saw the steel lattice-work towers with the familiar antenna sweeping in graceful spans between them, and forgot all about the missing plate of pudding.
The station was situated some distance from the Mountain Rest Hotel in a clearing cut out of the dense pine woods, and the boys ceased to wonder why they had not discovered it on some of their rambles. As they drew near they could see that everything was solidly and substantially built, as is usually the case with government work.
The station, besides the towers, comprised a large, comfortable building, which housed all the sending and receiving equipment, and a smaller building, in which the operators slept when off duty, and where spare equipment was stored.
The radio boys knocked at the door of the larger building, and after a short wait it was opened by a tall, rather frail looking young fellow, who eyed them inquiringly.
Bob explained that he and his friends were radio fans, and were anxious to look over the station, if it would not cause too much inconvenience.
"Not a bit of it," said the young operator, heartily. "To tell you the truth, there is not much doing here at this time of year, and company is mighty welcome. Step in and I"ll be glad to show you around the place."
CHAPTER XII
THE MARVELOUS SCIENCE
Inside of half an hour the boys were on a friendly footing with the young operator and felt as though they had known him a long time. He was only a few years older than themselves, and had been a full-fledged operator for about six months. The Mountain Pa.s.s station was his first a.s.signment, and he was inordinately proud of the complicated apparatus that went to compose it.
"This is some little station that Uncle Sam has rigged up here, and while there are plenty of bigger ones, there are very few that are more complete and up to date. Look at this three unit generator set, for instance. Compact, neat, and efficient, as you can easily see. It doesn"t take up much room, but it can do a whole lot."
"It does look as though it were built for business," admitted Bob. "I suppose that unit in the center is the driving motor, isn"t it?"
"Right," said the other. "And the one nearest you is a two thousand volt generator for supplying the plate circuit. The one at the other end is a double current generator. That supplies direct current at one hundred and twenty-five volts and four amps for the exciter circuit, and alternating current at eighty-eight volts and ten amps for feeding that twelve volt filament heating transformer that you see over there in the corner."
"Pretty neat, I"ll say," remarked Joe.
"I think so," said the other, and continued to point out the salient and interesting features of the equipment. "Over here, you see, is our main instrument panel. These dials over here control the variable condensers, and the other ones control the variometers. But there!" he exclaimed, catching himself up short. "I suppose none of you ever heard of such things before, did you?"
The radio boys looked at each other, and could not help laughing.
"We"ve got a faint idea what they are, anyway," chuckled Bob. "We"ve made enough of them to be on speaking terms, I should say."
"Made them!" exclaimed the other, surprised in his turn.
"Sure thing," grinned Bob. "We"ve made crystal detector sets and vacuum tube sets, and----"
"And other sets that we never knew just how to describe," interrupted the irrepressible Herb, with a laugh.
"Yes, that kind too," admitted Bob, with a grin. "But, anyway, we"ve made enough to know the difference between a variometer and a condenser."
"Well, I didn"t know I was talking to old hands at the game," said the operator. "I suppose I might have known that you wouldn"t take that long walk out here through the snow unless you were pretty well interested in radio."
"Yes, we"re dyed-in-the-wool fans," admitted Bob, and told the operator something of their radio work.
"I"m mighty glad to know that you fellows do understand the subject,"
said the operator, when Bob had finished. "I"m so enthusiastic about it myself, that it is a real pleasure to have somebody to talk to that knows what I"m talking about. So many of the people who come here seem to be natural born dumb-bells--at least, on the subject of radio."
"Such as you took us for at first, eh?" asked Jimmy, with a grin.
"I apologize for that," said the other, frankly. "Please don"t hold it against me."
"Personally, I don"t blame you a bit," said Bob. "We can"t expect you to be a mind reader."
"Well, then, that"s settled; so let"s look at the rest of the station," said the operator, whose name was Bert Thompson. "This is our transmitter panel over here. It is very compact, as you can see for yourselves."
He opened two doors at the front, one at the bottom, and raised the cover, thus exposing most of the interior mechanism to view.
"Here are all the fuse blocks down at the bottom, you see," Thompson continued. "The various switches are conveniently arranged where you can easily get at them while you are sitting in front of the panel.
Then up here are the microphones, with their coils and wiring where you can easily get at them for inspection or repairs. Rather a neat lay-out, don"t you think?"
"No doubt of it!" exclaimed Bob, admiringly. "We"ve never made a CW transmitting set yet, but we hope to some day. A set like this would cost a pile of money, even if you made it yourself."
"Rather so," admitted the young operator. "It takes a rich old fellow like Uncle Sam to pony up for a set like that."