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Theme
- 00:00
“Birthday Serenade” -
Willi Glahe
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Opening Announcement - 00:16
Welcome to “Wavescan”,
international DX program from Adventist World Radio
Researched and written in
Indianapolis, produced in studios of shortwave WRMI
Program outline
1. Tribute to Shortwave
WYFR-WRMI - 12: A multitude of QSL Cards
2. NASB 2014 Report:
World Voice Madagascar
3. Ancient
DX Report 1907
4. Annual DX Contest:
Rare QSL Cards
5. International DX News
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Tribute to Shortwave WYFR-WRMI - 12: A multitude of QSL Cards
- 01:01
We continue in our series of topics on
the fascinating backgrounds of the large American shortwave station, WYFR-WRMI,
and on this occasion, we present the interesting information regarding the
enormous amount of QSL cards issued from this station at its various locations
in the state of Massachusetts. But first
though, we examine the QSL cards that were issued from New York and
Mattappoisett by the forerunners of the big Boston station.
On May 10, 1924, the noted amateur
radio entrepreneur, Irving Vermilya at Mattappoisett some 50 miles south of
Boston, broadcast a music program from his mediumwave station WBBG under the
experimental callsign 1XAL. He received
many reception reports from listeners in surrounding states, written onto the
popular Applause Cards of the day.
In his first radio history book, On
the Shortwaves 1923 - 1945, Jerome Berg in suburban Boston refers to the fact
that shortwave station 2XAL, with studios in New York and transmitter at
Coytesville New Jersey, received a reception report from a listener in
Australia in the year 1928, at a time when the station was running at less than
500 watts. Station W2XAL from New Jersey
was transferred to Boston and it took over the experimental callsign from WBBG
at
Mattappoisett and began broadcasting in Boston under the now abandoned call
W1XAL in mid 1931.
The earliest known QSL cards from
Walter Lemmon’s
experimental shortwave station W1XAL in Boston were issued a few months later,
in January 1932. This first QSL card
acknowledged reception reports addressed to the shortwave station, as well as
to the experimental TV and Apex high fidelity stations operated by the
television pioneer Hollis Baird.
Since that time, this Boston
shortwave station under its different owners and locations has issued untallied
thousands of QSL cards in a multitude of different card designs and styles
during its more than 40 years of on air activity. Recent research has uncovered at least 50
different QSL card designs and styles, and it is likely that many more, perhaps
even four times that number, were issued.
One particular card showing the
callsign WRUL diagonally in large red letters was issued in 1954 and it was
numbered 14,424, though it is not known when this particular numbered sequence
began.
The design on many of the earlier
QSL cards featured a stylized microphone, and this motif was emblazoned on
several different QSL cards, both in size and in position. These cards usually listed the callsigns and
frequencies in use at the time.
One of the very rare QSL cards
issued for the reception of experimental station W1XAR verified test
transmissions on 11730 kHz on March 19, 1939.
According to an analysis of the historical events associated with this
specific transmitter, this particular QSL card is the only known verification
of transmitter W1XAR at its temporary location at suburban Norwood in
Boston. A picture of this card can be
seen in the Canadian DX magazine, DX Ontario dated July 2006, page 13.
There are no known QSL cards
verifying the usage of the two regularized callsigns, WSLA & WSLR, which
were in temporary use for just 13 days at Hatherley Beach, Scituate from August
25, 1939 until September 6. Both
transmitters at 20 kW each had been removed from the Boston location and re-installed
at the recently acquired facility at Hatherly Beach. The two temporary callsigns were replaced by
the now better known calls WRUL & WRUW.
A QSL card printed in the Spanish
language and posted in Nicaragua shows the two newly installed transmitters in
the renovated transmitter building at Hatherley Beach Scituate, with a
diagrammatic representation showing the scheduling for the two transmitters on
five different shortwave channels.
There are no known QSL cards
verifying the reception of the callsign WRUR which was in use on the air from
1941 - 1947 approximately. The call WRUR
was apparently a subsidiary call for the 20 kW WRUW on 9700 kHz.
On July 1, 1953, all five
transmitters at Scituate, WRUA WRUL WRUS WRUW & WRUX, were redesignated as
WRUL 1- 5 and the owners of the station, WWBF World Wide Broadcasting
Foundation, introduced a new QSL card.
This new card shows the single call letters diagonally in large red
print, WRUL. At least four different
versions of this card are known, though all are very similar.
In 1959, a listener in Sweden
received one of the new red letter QSL cards, and instead of the small stylized
microphone in the top right hand corner, there is a small version of the globe,
planet Earth. This is the only known
copy of this particular card, though obviously many more would have been
printed.
There is also only one known copy of
the QSL card verifying the 5 kW WIOD transmitter from Miami which was
re-activated at Scituate under the WWBF callsign WRUS. This same transmitter was later re-designated
as WRUX, and another QSL card was printed for the occasion with the callsign
again printed diagonally in large red print.
During the era when the Scituate
station was in service with the Voice of
America, United Nations Radio and AFRS the Armed Forces Radio Service, these
parent organizations issued their own QSL cards for their relays via the WRUL
transmitters.
Metro Media in New York purchased
the shortwave station at Hatherley Beach in 1960 and they owned the station for
just three years. Their QSL card showed
the code letters QSL in large black print on a plain card. At least two versions of this card are known,
one in off white and the other in dark green.
Then it was in mid 1962 that
Bonneville International bought the station and they owned it for a period of
eleven years. Their QSL cards showed the
letter W surrounding planet Earth, and most designs were very similar, though
printed on different colored card.
On June 1, 1966, Bonneville changed
the callsign from WRUL to WYNW and they produced a commemorative QSL card to
honor the occasion. This card shows
their production studios at 485 Madison Ave, New York.
Then, early on Sunday morning April
9, 1967, a disastrous fire of suspicious origin completely destroyed the
Hatherley Beach shortwave station. As
Jerome Berg tells us in his first radio book, the WNYW programming was carried
by the shortwave communication stations at Brentwood and Rocky Point for
a period of some four months. There are
no known QSL cards verifying this temporary fill in relay service.
In 1973, Bonneville sold shortwave
station WNYW to Family Radio in Oakland California and they changed the
callsign to WYFR and this change brought in a whole new series of new QSL
cards. We plan to present this story
here in Wavescan on a coming occasion.
*
NASB 2014 Greenville NC Report - 09:41
World
Voice Madagascar update
Follow
up from Madagascar
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Ancient DX Report 1907 - 17:55
During the year 1907, the broadcast
of radio programming was noted in the United States and in islandic Europe, as
well as from anchored ships and ships at sea.
Even though these broadcasts were certainly still experimental in
nature, yet the program content indicated the intent to entertain and to
inform; thus the designation radio broadcasting.
Soon after the beginning of the new
year 1907, on February 6, Lieut. Quentin Crauford of the Royal Navy in England
presented a radio broadcast over the air from the ship HMS “Andromeda”. At the time the "Andromeda" was
anchored at Chatham, an inlet off the Thames Estuary on the east coast of
England.
This
broadcast was organized by Lieutenant Quentin Crauford with the approval of the
naval authorities and In recounting the event, Wireless Operator Crauford
stated that he adapted the spark wireless transmitter QFP on the
"Andromeda" so that it could broadcast music and speech. His historic inaugural broadcast was a
patriotic concert program performed by navy personnel. This broadcast, with the approval of the
naval authorities, began with a rendition of the national anthem, God Save the
King.
This surprise broadcast was heard by
wireless operators on board other navy vessels anchored nearby. However, as a security measure, Lt Crauford
was not permitted to publicize the event, neither before nor afterwards, though
the event attained historic significance as the first wireless broadcast in
England and the first from a ship. It
appears that another radio broadcast was subsequently presented from another
British ship nearby.
American experimenter Lee de Forest
also made several radio program broadcasts from ships, both at sea and at
anchorage. On July 18, he transmitted
race results from the steam yacht “Thelma” at
the Lake Erie Regatta and these voice reports were received ashore on a nearby
island by his assistant Frank Butler.
Subsequently, Forest and Butler constructed additional transmitters and
made many experimental transmissions with voice and music content between
buildings in Toledo Ohio.
As a result of the success of these
radio ventures, Forest was invited to install two transmitters on the navy
vessels “Connecticut” and
“Virginia”;
and this led to the the installation of more than a score of transmitters on
other navy vessels.
On December 16, Forest made a special
entertainment broadcast from the ship “Dolphin” as
it was moored at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. Swedish born 34 year old opera singer Eugenia
Farrar sang “I
Love You Truly” and
other songs during the live broadcast which was reported in a New York
newspaper. This broadcast was the send
off for the round the world tour of the Great White Fleet.
Over along the Pacific coast of the
Americas, wireless operator Arthur Isbell made many wireless transmissions
aboard the passenger ship “President” under
the callsign V2. The transmitter was
manufactured under the Massie system and it operated on 750 kHz at 3 kW. Several of these transmissions created new
long distance records.
Subsequently, Arthur Isbell
established a wireless station in San Francisco with antenna masts 200 ft
tall. This station adopted the callsign
IAA, a reversal of the operators initials.
Many newspapers covered the story of
Lee de Forest’s
radio broadcasts from the Tellharmonic Hall at 38th and Broadway in New York,
both before and after the events. This
program, the first in a short series, presented music from the Harmonium, and
listeners were invited to make request for special selections of music. Test broadcasts between the Tellharmonic Hall
and the passenger liner “Normandie" began a week in
advance of the main broadcasts.
In Canada, the Canadian
Meteorological Service began the broadcast of time signals on a regular basis,
the first in the world. The time signal
was generated at the Dominion Observatory at St. John New Brunswick; it was on
the air daily around 10:00 am; and it was broadcast by the Marconi coastal
station HX at Camperdown near Halifax Nova Scotia.
Over in continental Europe, crystal
radio receivers were developed by Tissot and Pelin in France; and Robert
Goldschmidt in Belgium conducted wireless experiments between the Palace of
Justice in Brussels and two cooperating locations, the Namur Citadel and the
Liege Observatory.
The Christchurch Exhibition in New
Zealand, at which wireless transmission and reception was demonstrated, ended
on April 15; and a huge Marconi wireless station was inaugurated at Cliffden in
Ireland for trans-Atlantic service on October 17.
Right
towards the end of the year 1907, the Great White Fleet began its triumphal
world tour and more than 20 American naval vessels were equipped with the new
Forest wireless equipment. That story
will come on another occasion here in Wavescan.
*
Program Announcement - 22:52
Allen
Graham
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Contest Information - 23:32
You should remember to participate
in our big annual DX contest in September which comes to you under the title, “Rare,
Unusual, Unique QSLs” - AWR “Focus on Asia” 2014
Annual DX Contest. In brief, you are
invited to:-
* Provide information about your rare, unusual and unique QSLs, up to
five in number.
* Describe these QSLs in one brief paragraph each.
* Provide reception reports for three AWR Asian broadcasts.
* Provide a photograph of an Adventist unit in your country.
* Send three radio cards.
As an example of a rare QSL card . .
. . Early one Sunday morning back in the
year 1961, my wife and I were relaxing in our home in Launceston on the island
of Tasmania. I switched on the radio and
listened to the programming from mediumwave station 7LA on 1100 kHz and we
heard the announcer state that they were broadcasting temporarily from their
100 watt emergency transmitter which was installed at their studio
location. The subsequent QSL card
verified this low powered transmitter, perhaps the only verification ever
issued for this unit.
*
International DX News - 24:58
NEW TIME FOR WAVESCAN ON KVOH: And
as you know, Wavescan is broadcast each week on KVOH shortwave in Los Angeles. Ray
Robinson at the station tells us “we made some changes to our English
schedule on 9975 kHz last weekend. Those changes
impact the airing of Wavescan on Sunday evening (UT Monday). Previously,
we have run Wavescan from 0200-0230 UTC (10:00-10:30 pm Eastern Time). Effective
immediately, Wavescan will now be heard half an hour earlier, from 0130-0200
UTC (9:30-10:00pm Eastern), still on 9975 kHz”.
AMELIA EARHART: A
quick update: You
may remember back on June 8 we told you here in Wavescan about the planned
around-the-world flight of 31-year-old Amelia Earhart to replicate and complete
the feat that her namesake predecessor attempted back in 1937. Well,
on July 11, Amelia Rose Earhart landed at Oakland
International Airport, making her the youngest woman to circumnavigate the
globe in a single-engine airplane. Her mission even
included a ceremonial flyover of remote Howland Island in the Pacific where
many believe the original Amelia Earhart disappeared.
*
Music of the World - 25:36
Greece, folk music,
instrumental
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Closing Announcement - 25:39
Thanks for listening to “Wavescan”,
international DX program from Adventist World Radio
Researched and written in
Indianapolis
Next week:-
1. Focus on Asia: The
Story of Radio Broadcasting in Pakistan: On the Air in Peshawar
2.
WRMI Insert
3. Australian
DX Report
Several QSL cards available. Send your AWR & KSDA reception reports
for Wavescan to the AWR address in Indianapolis; and
also to the station your radio is tuned to: WRMI or WWCR
or KVOH, or to the AWR relay stations that carry Wavescan.
Wavescan address:-
Box 29235
Indianapolis
Indiana 46229 USA
Wavescan @ AWR.org
Jeff White, shortwave WRMI
*
Music Outrun - 27:06
*
Program Ends - 28:55
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