*
Theme
-
00:00
“Birthday Serenade” -
Willi Glahe
*
Opening Announcement - 00:16
Welcome to “Wavescan”,
international DX program from Adventist World Radio
Give New Year greetings
Researched and written in
Indianapolis, produced in studios of shortwave WRMI
Program outline
1.
Focus on the South Pacific: New Caledonia and its American Radio Station
2.
The Story of Australian Shortwave Callsigns: VLA
3.
Japan DX Report
4. SQOTW22 Special QSL
of the Week: Cyclone Emergency in Australia
*
Focus on the South Pacific: New Caledonia and its American Radio Station - 01:06
A French island with a Scottish name
in the South Pacific that was discovered by an Englishman, and it was
overwhelmed with a temporary American population far larger than its own
citizenry. That, was New Caledonia!
This tropical island lies 750 miles
off the east coast of Australia; it has a richer biodiversity
of birds, animals and vegetation than what the
noted English naturalist Charles Darwin discovered in the Galapagos Islands;
and it is the locale for a home born population that speaks more than 40 local
languages. This French territory of New
Caledonia encompasses more than 250 islands, 40 of which are inhabited; and the
main island, narrow and long, could be described on a map as looking like a
wriggly worm, swimming towards New Zealand.
The original inhabitants of New
Caledonia were the Lapita people, who, it is said, arrived from Taiwan two and
three thousand years ago. Their culture
had developed an ornate form of pottery that was discovered by two American
archaeologists at more than 30 sites in New Caledonia.
Captain James Cook, an explorer with
the Royal Navy in England, was the first European to site New Caledonia, and
this was on his second voyage to the South Pacific in 1774. He named the island New Caledonia, a Latin
name for Scotland, because the terrain he saw reminded him of Scotland. The first French visitor was Jean-Francois de
Galaup with the French frigates “Astrolabe” and “Boussole” in 1788.
For more than half a century, there
was very little European contact with New Caledonia, but from 1840 onwards, the
Europeans developed a greater interest in this island, due to its highly
desirable sandalwood, and also mineral mining, in particular nickel. Christian missionaries from England came to
New Caledonia in the mid 1800s, and they stated that cannibalism was rampant
among the local Kanaka peoples, much of which was involved with ceremonialism.
Under orders from Napoleon 3,
Admiral Febvrier Despointes took formal possession of New Caledonia as part of
the French empire in the Pacific on September 24, 1853; and Noumea, the capital city, was officially founded on June
25 of the following year, 1854. For the
next half century, New Caledonia served as a penal colony for French criminals
who were imprisoned there for varying periods of time.
After the fall of France during the
European War in June 1940, the General Council in Noumea opted to support the
Free French, and the pro-Vichy governor was forced out of office; he retired to
French IndoChina.
With co-operation from Australia,
New Caledonia became an important allied base during World War 2 and the first
convoy of fifteen large American navy ships arrived on March 12, 1942. During the Pacific War, more than one million
American service personnel were staged through New Caledonia. At the time, the total population of the
island was only a quarter million.
The Americans built up the harbor
facilities at Noumea, and they erected 85 steel warehouses to accommodate all
of the incoming supplies for their forces in the South Pacific. The medical facilities for the American navy
included two hospitals in Noumea, each with a capacity of 2,000 beds. Two airfields were developed, one at Tontouta
35 miles north of Noumea, and the other at Magenta Bay, across the waterway
from Noumea.
The first radio broadcasting station
on the air in New Caledonia for the benefit of forces personnel was a small unit
that was installed in the International Red Cross Building in Noumea. The equipment for this mediumwave station was
bought in Australia, and it was launched on September 5, 1943 apparently on 965
kHz.
This informal broadcasting station
in Noumea was taken over by American forces personnel and then replaced by an
official American station in January of the following year (1944), on the same
channel 965 kHz. This station initially
identified on air as All Services Radio, ASR, though this title was soon afterwards
changed to AES, the American Expeditionary Station, and sometimes the Allied
Expeditionary Station.
When official callsigns in the WV
and WX series were allocated to the American forces entertainment stations
throughout the world, the official callsign for Noumea became WVUS. At this time, all of the American forces
stations around the world were identified under the same group nomenclature;
AFRS, Armed Forces Radio Service.
Back at that time, three AFRS
stations were set up quite simultaneously in the South Pacific; the first two
were at Guadalcanal and Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, with WVUS in
Noumea New Caledonia as the third, and this was followed quite quickly by
another station located at Espirito Santo in the New Hebrides. However, as was stated, the mediumwave WVUS,
in the same Red Cross Building in Noumea, was better equipped than the two
other stations located at Guadalcanal and Espirito Santo.
Station WVUS Noumea, with its 1 kW
transmitter now on 975 kHz, acted as the main station in what became known as
the Mosquito Network, a group of similar isolated stations in various islands
of the South Pacific. The programming on
each station was normally produced locally or taken off live shortwave
broadcasts from the United States.
However, in November 1944, a special program produced at WVUS Noumea was
picked up off air and relayed live by three other stations in the Mosquito
Network: WVUQ Guadalcanal, WVUR Espirito Santo & 1ZM Auckland in New Zealand.
Radio station WVUS in the Red Cross
building in Noumea was closed in November 1945 and the transmitter was flown to
Guadalcanal where it was reconditioned and installed for station WVUQ.
However, a new WVUS was inaugurated
at the airport at Tontouta, 35 miles north of Noumea in the same month,
November 1945. This new station, with
different equipment, operated with the same power, 1 kW, and on the same
channel, 975 kHz as the previous WVUS.
However, this station was now under the control of the United States Air
Force and it was no longer a part of the informal Mosquito Network.
This new WVUS was on the air for
less than a year and it was closed at the end of the broadcast day, Saturday
night June 15 of the following year 1946.
However, a weekly Australian radio magazine for November 2, 1946
reported in its radio news column that three AFRS stations in the South
Pacific, each previously closed, were heard in New Zealand in late September,
including the comparatively new WVUS at the American air force base at Tontouta
in New Caledonia.
Radio station WVUS on New Caledonia
was often heard with a good signal by international radio monitors in New
Zealand and Australia, and at least one QSL is known. The noted Arthur Cushen in New Zealand
reported in a book he wrote, The World in My Ears, that he received a prepared
QSL card from this station during the era of the Pacific War.
* Program
Announcement - 09:37
Allen Graham
* The Story of
Australian Shortwave Callsigns: VLA - 10:28
In our program today, we present the
first topic in a series on shortwave callsigns in Australia. Each of these callsigns begins with the two
letters VL followed by another letter in the English alphabet, in progressive
order from A to Z. Here today, as we
begin this long sequence of interesting radio information, we present the
fascinating story of the callsign VLA.
Back more than one hundred years
ago, two wireless stations were under construction in New Zealand. The electrical equipment for these two
coastal communication stations was manufactured by the Telefunken company in
Germany, and German technicians were performing the installation procedures
under the auspices of the Australasian Wireless Company in Sydney Australia.
The first of these two wireless
stations, at least in alphabetic order, was located at the edge of Doubtless
Bay, near Awanui, right at the very tip of the North Island of New
Zealand. This new wireless station was
installed on a 100 acre site; the triangular mild steel antenna tower weighed
60 tons and it stood at 400 ft high, resting on a ball and socket joint on a
glass insulator; and a 70 horse power motor generated the electricity. Both the receiver and the transmitter were
installed in the same building, though in separate rooms.
This new wireless station was
activated on March 27, 1913 under the original callsign, NZA, standing for New
Zealand station A at Awanui and Auckland.
It was taken into regular service at the end of the same year, December
18, and by that time the callsign had been modified from NZA to VLA, due to new
international wireless regulations.
In 1924, the electrical equipment at station
VLA was changed from spark gap operation to electronic valve or tube
operation. Then in 1927 the callsign was
again amended, this time from VLA to ZLA, due again to a change in
international radio regulations. The
station was ultimately closed on February 10, 1930 when its communication
service was no longer needed.
And then a few months later, we find
the callsign VLA in use on Bruny Island, a small island located near the south
east coast of the Australian island state of Tasmania. The island is very rugged and its shape is
very irregular, and in reality, it is more like two separated islands joined by
a very narrow isthmus. Bruny Island is
named in honor of the French explorer Bruni d’Entrecasteaux.
When European explorers first came
to the area, the twin islands were inhabited by a small tribe of Tasmanian
Aborigines. The landmark Lighthouse, now
a tourist attraction, was built in 1838 at the very bottom tip of South Bruny
Island, facing Antarctica.
A small communication radio station
was installed at the lighthouse in 1930, and the first entry in the log book is
dated June 1. Eight years late, the
equipment at the radio station was updated with the installation of a pedal
wireless transmitter which was powered by a generator attached to a stationary
bicycle.
A brief report in an Australian radio
magazine, dated in August 1941, gives the callsign for this small communication
radio station at the Bruny Island Lighthouse as VLA, and it operated just above
the standard mediumwave band, as it was at the time, on 1579 kHz.
During the war, the callsign VLA was
unassigned from the small communication radio station on Bruny Island and held
in readiness for a powerful 100 kW shortwave transmitter that was under
construction for installation at Shepparton in Victoria. Three transmitters at 100 kW each were
envisaged for deployment at Shepparton, and the planned allocation of callsigns
was VLA, VLC & VLM.
The driver and preliminary stages
for the new VLA transmitter were constructed in Australia by AWA and the
modulator and final stages were constructed by STC, the Standard Telephones and
Cables, both in suburban Sydney. The VLA
transmitter, with its two channel input allowing for quick frequency change,
was activated on August 13, 1945, and it was taken into scheduled service two
days later, August 15.
A postfix number after the callsign,
such as VLA3 VLA6 or VLA8, indicated a specific frequency for on air
usage. Beginning on June 1, 1951, the
usage of the postfix numbers was modified, so that the number itself indicated
a particular megahertz band.
In 1961, the VLA transmitter was
bifurcated, and with the insertion of additional electronic equipment, a
complete new transmitter became available, and it was assigned a new callsign
VLF. The original VLA transmitter was
withdrawn from service in 1983.
Also at the end of the same year in
which VLA was bifurcated, Radio Australia dropped the usage of official
callsigns, and instead the callsign VLA identified a specific program line from
the Melbourne studios to the transmitter site at Shepparton. To this day, the identification A or VLA
still refers to the specific program line that runs to Shepparton, and not
necessarily a specific transmitter.
Radio Australia was a prolific
verifier of reception reports and literally thousands of QSL cards under the
callsign VLA were posted out to listeners all around the world. During the quarter century when this callsign
was in vogue, two different QSL cards were in use, though half a dozen slight
variations are known.
The first card was in use from 1946
- 1950 and it depicted a map of Australia in yellow with a stylized antenna;
and the second card which was in use during the 1950s, depicted a more detailed
map with the famous laughing bird, the Kookaburra. This second card had two major variations,
one with the station name, Radio Australia, in yellow and the other with the
station name in red. Form letter QSLs
were issued for a few years during the 1990s, giving the usage of the line
callsign VLA together with the frequency
and transmitter location as Shepparton.
*
Japan DX Report - 17:28
Yukiko
Tsuji
*
SQOTW22 Special QSL of the Week: Cyclone Emergency in Australia
- 23:17
International Radio Monitor Tony
Ashar in Indonesia tells us that he heard a special broadcast over Radio
Australia with emergency programming beamed to northern Queensland during
Cyclone Yasi in 2011. At the time, local
mediumwave coverage was off the air in the stricken areas and Radio Australia
Shepparton carried the state and regional programming from Brisbane with 100 kW
on 6080 kHz.
The large ABC QSL card received by
Tony Ashar presents a map of Australia with all of the mediumwave stations
shown at the actual locations. Noted
Australian international radio monitor Ian Johnson signed the card on behalf of
Radio Australia, verifying reception on February 4, 2011.
*
Music of the World - 24:08
New
Caledonia: Living Together, choir & local orchestra
*
Closing Announcement - 24:45
Thanks for listening to “Wavescan”,
international DX program from Adventist World Radio
Researched and written in
Indianapolis
Next week:-
1.
The Philippine Radio Story: Press Wireless Returns to the Philippines - 2
2.
World’s
Smallest Radio Station
3.
SQOTW23 Special QSL of the Week Benin: Hard to hear and difficult to QSL
4. Philippine 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. Remember too, you can send a reception report to each
of the DX reporters when their segment is on the
air here in Wavescan: Japan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Australia &
India. They will verify with their own colorful QSL
card. Return postage and an address
label are always appreciated.
Wavescan address:-
Box 29235
Indianapolis
Indiana 46229 USA
Wavescan @ AWR.org
Jeff White, shortwave WRMI
*
Music Outrun - 26:36
*
Program Ends - 28:55
