CO537-5142 — Page 282

Next comes the purely practical question of how, if in principle the matter is agreed, the technical question of raising the power of the station can be solved. In this connection we have a proposal to make to you. The Foreign Office possess in Singapore some 71⁄2 kilowatt short-wave transmitters which are surplus to their requirements and which will probably be disposed of if not allocated to the Office's purposes shortly. The suggestion is that one or more of these transmitters should be converted from short- wave to medium-wave, a process which we understand should not take more than a month or two and which is fairly simple. They might then be shipped to Hong Kong and be erected there, either to take the place of the existing 21⁄2 kilowatt station or to occupy one of the medium frequencies allocated to the colony and to radiate a second programme, while leaving the colony's domestic services undisturbed.

We have not the information available to tell us whether e.g. a new aerial mast or special reflector antennae would be necessary to make either of these proposals effective. But clearly a first step would be an enquiry of the Hong Kong Government to know what are their reactions, and perhaps this technical point could be included in such an enquiry.

You will doubtless also wish to include an enquiry concerning the availability of the electricity supply. If such supply was not available, we should have to give urgent consideration to the question of providing a generator.

We may have further proposals to make to you for a second stage of power development later on, but these are too nebulous to put forward at present and we suggest that an immediate scheme based on provision of these 71⁄2 kilowatt transmitters should be considered first.

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