*
Theme
- 00:00
“Birthday
Serenade” - Willi Glahe
*
Opening Announcement - 00:17
Welcome
to “Wavescan”, international DX program from Adventist World Radio
Researched
and written in Indianapolis, produced in studios of shortwave WRMI
Program
outline
1. Message from Malaysia
2.
BBC Indian Ocean Relay Station Seychelles: The End of an Era
3.
International DX Report
4.
Canadian DX Report
5.
World’s Most Inaccurate Scientific Measurement
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Message from Malaysia - 00:51
The Malaysian Amateur Radio Emergency Service Society
(MARES/9M4CME) is calling all ham radios particularly in India, Indonesia, Sri
Lanka, Mauritius, Seychelles, Thailand to participate in the search and rescue
of the missing aircraft, Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER bearing
registration 9M-MRO flight MH370.
The flight has gone missing from ATC radar at 1.21
am local time 8 March 2014. Search & Rescue SAR was initially
done within the vicinity of the South China Sea. However, new confirmed
evidence recently revealed has shifted the SAR activities to the vicinity of
Malacca Strait, Andaman Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. This is a huge
area to cover roughly 21,000 sq km. To date, SAR efforts have the
combined assets from at least 14 countries involving more than 50 aircraft and
30 vessels making it the single largest SAR mission ever.
In light of the multinational effort that is undertaken, and also
in view of the many rumours of the plane crashing or landing in islands within
the SAR area, MARES is calling all ham stations, especially those from the
countries within the search area, to participate in a daily reporting session.
The objective is for ham operators to provide any sightings, information
or evidence that might help the authorities to find the missing MH370. Details
are as follows:
Daily Check-in and reporting session will be done at UTC 1300 hrs
- 1500 hrs on 14.250 MHz and 21.250 MHz (+- QRM)
Any urgent message beyond the specified DX session time shall be
communicated via email to emergency@mares.org.my
All information and evidence obtained will be forwarded to the
Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation and Malaysian National Security Council
by MARES.
On behalf of Malaysia, MARES would like to thank in advance all
participating stations for their time and effort in helping us find the missing
9M-MRO / MH370. Let us all do our part in this moment of crisis.
Please do spread this effort to stations and clubs you think
might be helpful in our effort.
Thank you, and 73s,
9W2FG on behalf of MARES.
Yours sincerely,
Jose Jacob, VU2JOS
National Institute of
Amateur Radio
Hyderabad, India
*
International DX Report - 04:42
Bihar Wifi service
EDXC Convention, France Sep 19 - 22,
2014
New
Wavescan Scheduling A14
*
BBC Indian Ocean Relay Station Seychelles: The End of an Era - 06:05
On
Saturday March 29, the shortwave service from the BBC Indian Ocean Relay
Station in the Seychelles Islands came to an end after 26 years of broadcasting
into East Africa. This shortwave service
is ended, though the lone remaining FM station operated by the BBC in the
Seychelles Islands will remain on the air.
The
Seychelles Islands are listed as an African country, located nearly a thousand
miles east from the continent itself. A
total of 155 islands are listed officially as belonging to the Seychelles,
though only 40 are permanently inhabited.
The total area of all of these islands is just 175 square miles, though
they are scattered around an area of 400,000 square miles in the Indian Ocean.
Some
of the islands are described geologically as granitic, while others are
semi-tropical coral islands and atolls.
The largest island is Mahe, with Victoria as the capital city. Two other major islands are Praslin and La
Digue.
The
total population in all of the Seychelles Islands is a little less than
100,000, all of whom can trace their ancestry back to France, England, Africa,
China or India. The national languages
are English and French, though most people also speak the local Creole which is
French derived. Tourism is one of their
main sources of income.
There
are many life forms in the Seychelles that are quite unique, such as the Black
Parrot, which is their national bird.
Other unique life forms are the strange Jellyfish Tree which thus far
has evaded every form of propagation, and the coconut tree coco de mer with its
huge double coconut, which can weigh up to 50 lbs each.
It
is thought that the first visitors to the Seychelles Islands were Austronesians
from Indonesia who passed through the area more than a thousand years ago. The next visitors came in from the Maldive
Islands around 800 years ago.
The
first European visitor was the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama who was
en route to India in 1502. The first
known European landing in the islands was made by Captain Sharpeigh of the East
India Company in January 1609; and a French expedition from Mauritius visited
Mahe Island in 1742.
Fourteen
years later, the French laid claim to the Seychelles Islands by placing an inscribed Stone of Possession at La
Poudriere (Victoria) on November 1, 1756.
Then a few years later again, the first permanent inhabitants in these
islands arrived from Mauritius. Though
the Seychelles were originally a French possession, they were granted to
England by the Treaty of Paris in 1814; and they assumed independence on June
29, 1976.
It
was back in the year 1978 that the BBC gave recognition to the fact that it
would be advisable to establish a relay station somewhere in the area, though
because of a slow down in the economy in England, funding was not
available. However, three years later,
the BBC dropped its programming in the Italian and Maltese languages in order
to provide funding for this projected new station.
The
BBC then began negotiations with the Seychelles government; and on August 8,
1983, they announced in their DX program, Waveguide, that the projected new
shortwave station would be ready for service five years later. The BBC and the Seychelles government signed
an agreement in 1985, and work on the new station began during the following
year.
The
new BBC Indian Ocean Relay Station was constructed at Anse Mahe on the west
coast of the island of Mahe and a swampy mangrove area was filled in for this
purpose. The plans for the new station
originally called for four shortwave transmitters, 2 @ 300 kW and 2 Marconis at
250 kW, together with a total of six four-band curtain antennas suspended from
four self-standing towers. The total
cost for this project was estimated at £8 million. However, when the project was completed, only
two shortwave transmitters were installed, both Marconi Model B6131 at 250 kW.
An
official ceremony took place on June 9, 1986 to mark the beginning of construction;
two years later initial test transmissions were radiated; and the station was
taken into regular service on September 25, 1988. An opening ceremony was staged a few days
later on October 7. Programming beamed
into East Africa was progressively transferred from the BBC Cyprus to this new
station in the Seychelles.
In
order to ascertain the effective coverage area for the new BBC Indian Ocean
Relay Station, the BBC offered full data QSL cards, though only for listeners
in the target areas in Africa. However,
generally speaking, the staff at the Seychelles station did issue QSL cards for
all reception reports sent direct to the station itself.
Programming
for the BBC Seychelles came direct from London and it was made up usually of
the BBC World Service in English, the BBC African Service, and programming in
the Somali language. This scheduling was
on the air via the two transmitters in parallel for around a dozen hours daily.
The
first BBC FM station in the Seychelles was inaugurated in Victoria on 106.2 MHz
in 1995; and this was followed in mid 2004 with the installation of two
additional FM stations, at Anse Soleil on 105.2 and Pointe aux Sel on 105.6.
The
BBC celebrated the 20th anniversary of their Indian Ocean Relay
Station on October 2, 2008. At the time,
they stated that 9 million people were listening to the relay programming from
this shortwave station.
Then
five years later, they announced that the station would be closed. The chosen date was Saturday March 29. The shortwave station is now silent; though
we understand that one of their downlink FM stations, Victoria, will remain on
the air with programming from the BBC African Service.
* Program Announcement - 12:16
Allen Graham
*
Canadian DX Report
- 13:04
Harold Sellers
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The World’s Most Inaccurate Scientific Measurement - 23:19
As
we are aware, the accepted measurement for a radio channel is expressed in
metres or kilohertz. Back a century or
more ago, the usual measurement of the channel was given in the metric style,
metres. This term expressed the distance
between two successive crests of the propagated radio signal, like the two
successive waves in the sea.
Initially,
the actual wavelength of the earliest wireless transmitters was determined by
the natural wavelength of the transmitting equipment together with the antenna
system. However, when the usage of tuned
radio transmitters was introduced, a shift in terminology took place and the
identification of radio channels began to change from wavelength in metres to
frequency in kilocycles.
Back
in those times, it was understood that the relationship between wavelength in
metres and frequency in kilocycles was 1:300,000. That is, if you divide wavelength or
kilocycles into 300,000, then you will obtain the reciprocal.
For
example, the well known chonohertz station, WWV, transmits exactly on 10,000
kilohertz. Divide that figure into
300,000 and you obtain the wavelength at exactly 30 metres. However, we ask the question: How accurate
is the accepted relationship between metres and kilocycles, or kilohertz as we
say today?
The
exact length of a metre was accepted in the year 1791 as 1/10 millionth
part of the distance from the equator to the North Pole at sea level. In later years, this distance has been
refined for greater accuracy, though the concept remains the same.
This
same distance, a metre, is also expressed as how far light will travel in a
vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second. As a comparison, light could travel seven
times around the Earth in one second; and it takes light approximately 8
minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
Now, electricity and light travel at the same speed.
The
number 299,792,458 is certainly almost 300,000,000, but not exactly. In fact there is a
difference of 207,452, an error of
approximately .07%. Thus, if WWV is
transmitting on exactly 10,000 kHz, then the exact wavelength would be
approximately 29.98 metres, not exactly 30 metres, a difference of 2
centimetres, about ¾ inch.
So,
does this popular conversion rate between metres and kilohertz at 1:300,000
qualify as the world’s most inaccurate scientific measurement? Yeah, probably! Does it really matter? No, probably not!
*
Music of the World
- 26:27
Chechnya: Folk instrumental
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Closing Announcement - 26:44
Thanks
for listening to “Wavescan”, international DX program from Adventist World
Radio
Researched
and written in Indianapolis
Next
week:-
1.
On the Air Shortwave from India’s First Capital City: The Calcutta Story
2.
The Origins of Early Shortwave Broadcasting
3.
Indian DX Report
Two
QSL cards available - AWR & WRMI
Wavescan
address:-
Box
29235
Indianapolis
Indiana
46229 USA
Wavescan
@ AWR.org
Jeff
White, shortwave WRMI
*
Music Outrun
- 27:59
*
Program Ends
- 28:55
