1951

Mount Hays F/M

Flying along the B.C. coast, passing over or landing at Sand­spit Q.C.I. and Annette Island, Alaska, are scores of aircraft. Behind the scenes there is a teletype weather circuit supplying the Radio Range Stations at Sandspit and Annette Island with weather information vital to the safety of these aircraft.

F/M radio transmitters and receivers installed at Mount Hays are used to automatically relay this teletype circuit. In addition, long distance telephone calls to the Queen Charlottes and Ketchikan, Alaska are automatically relayed by F/M radio.

The three or four radio operators stationed at Mount Hays must be specialists in the maintenance of F/M gear, and specialists also at mountain climbing. During months of winter weather these fellows shoulder heavy packs of groceries and supplies, and then start off for a climb of same 1400 feet to the transmitter building. That's 1400 feet higher in altitude, and same of the trail is a grade of 40%

Drifting snow, heavy fresh snowfalls, and other combinations of wind and weather all combine to make a winter time trip up Mount Hays a test of endurance. Six feet of snow at the transmitter building is no rarity, and neither are snow drifts at the receiver building. The receiver building is over 200 feet higher in altitude than the transmitter building, and ten or twelve foot snowdrifts have been noted there. Often too!

Despite all the snow and ice and treacherous trail of winter time, and despite the muskeg and mosquitoes of spring and summer, there are good points to Mount Hays.

Radio Operators generally are pale clock watching fellows who must make weather broadcasts twice hourly, who sit long and lonely graveyard shifts listening to crashes of Q2 N, who hunch over battered typewriters and try to piece together the gargling of aircraft calling them, who mutter and suffer on CW circuits while earphones muss their greying hair, who must remember always to have their sequence and synoptic weather reports ready on time for the teletype machines. Well, at Mount Hays we're healthy, muscular, barrel chested, and rapidly getting varicose veins and flat feet. Anyone want a transfer?