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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.

Wavescan N490, July 15, 2018

Gone and Forgotten: Shortwave Radio SEARV in the Philippines - Part 1

Our opening feature in Wavescan today is Gone and Forgotten: The story of Shortwave Radio SEARV in the Philippines - Part 1. Today's feature is a presentation of the first half of the story, about a low power facility in the Philippines that was a forerunner to a higher powered international shortwave station that was on the air for ten years. It was heard far and wide while it was active, and it honored reception reports with a QSL card that showed a large callsign in a bright cheery red.

Strange as it may seem, this international shortwave station SEARV has been almost completely forgotten. It does not even appear among the other historic international shortwave stations in the Philippines that are listed in the series of booklets under the title, Transmitter Documentation Project, compiled by Ludo Maes in Belgium.

Let's go back now to the year 1901, the year of earliest beginnings for what is now Silliman University in the Philippines, or the Silliman Institute, as it was back then. It was originally established as an elementary school for boys, and it opened with just fifteen boys in a rented house by the sea at Dumaguete on the south eastern side of Negros Island.

The pioneer educational staff were Dr. and Mrs. David Hibbard; the school was named in honor of Dr. Horace Brinsmade Silliman, a Christian businessman in Cohoes, New York, who funded the original project; and back then it was also supported by the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The Silliman Institute was granted university status in the Philippines in the year 1938.

On May 26, 1942, during the Pacific War, the Japanese army entered the university property in the southern Philippines, and they took it over as their headquarters for the local area. Several members of the university staff, together with many students, fled into nearby mountainous areas, where academic studies were continued under the informal title, Jungle University.

Before the Pacific War engulfed the Philippines, Professor Henry Roy Bell had established his own amateur radio transmitter at the university, and when he fled into the mountainous areas, he took some of the radio equipment with him. In an isolated jungle location he reactivated the transmitter under the callsign KZCB, and he made direct contact in Morse Code with Hawaii, California and Australia.

The Australian station that transmitter KZCB contacted was General Douglas MacArthur's callsign KAZ in Darwin, which was in reality the Australian aviation aeradio station VZDN. The flow of regular communication from KZCB began in mid-April 1943, and MacArthur himself responded to this Philippine station.

Five years after the end of the Pacific War, a 1 kW mediumwave station DYSR was installed in Silliman Hall and it was activated on 840 kHz in August 1950. Soon afterwards, according to the WRTVHB, a 250 watt shortwave transmitter was activated under the callsign DYH4, and subsequently another shortwave transmitter, a 300 watt unit, was activated on the tropical band channel 3277 kHz under the callsign DYB4.

Programming for mediumwave DYRS was produced locally, and all three transmitters carried the same programming in parallel. A 15 minute program from the Voice of America was on the air each Sunday and Wednesday.

Occasionally the station administration issued statements regarding the planned upgrading of their station with higher power on both mediumwave and shortwave. These projected plans included an increase on mediumwave from 1 kW to 5 kW, and on shortwave an increase from 250 and 300 watts up to 1 kW and perhaps even 20 kW.

However, only one of these projected power increases was ever implemented, and that took place in the mid-1960s when a new mediumwave transmitter at 10 kW was installed. Under this power increase, though, the station was still on the air on the same channel 840 kHz under the same callsign DYSR.

Apparently the usage of the two low power shortwave transmitters continued even when the 50 kW SEARV transmitter was inaugurated in 1968, and all three transmitters were closed at approximately the same time in the mid-1970s. The mediumwave unit was closed in 1976 in favor of an FM service.

An interesting event transpired at Dumaguete in the southern Philippines during the evening of Saturday, March 29, 1975. This is what happened.

Back 43 years ago, there was a call from the police on Siquijor Island, stating that they needed reinforcements to ward off a band of pirates. Flight Lieutenant Eugene Malahay at Mactan Airbase on Mactan Island in Cebu province was asked to fly a contingent of forty security officers to the air strip at Dumaguete from where they would travel east by launch across the dozen miles to Siquijor Island.

Air force officer Malahay flew a Fairchild C123K Provider plane with its contingent of enforcement officers for the 36 minute journey from Mactan Island to Dumagete. However, the air strip at Dumaguete had no runway lights, and even in the clear sky moonlight, the runway could not be seen adequately.

The pilot made a few low passes over the runway, and local citizens became aware that a plane seemed to be in distress. The aircraft radio receiver was tuned to mediumwave station DYSR at the university, and the travelers were surprised to hear an announcement from the local police office, asking nearby people to drive quickly to the air strip and to light it up with car headlights. Shortly afterwards, the plane landed safely, making this event the first night landing at the Dumaguete airstrip.

That was Part 1 of our story on the early origin of Shortwave Radio SEARV in the Philippines. Next week here in Wavescan you will hear Part 2.

Postscript

But as a quick a postscript to Part 1 of this Shortwave Radio SEARV article, we present now this additional information on the radio scene at these three locations: Mactan Island, Siquijor Island and Dumaguete.

Mactan Island is the most densely populated island in the Philippines with nearly half a million people on its 21.65 square miles, and it was already a thriving community when the Spanish settled there in the 1500s. It is located just a short distance away from Cebu City on Cebu Island, with two road bridges making a connection. There are two airports side by side on Mactan Island, the Philippine air force and also a civilian airport.

On the radio scene, there are no radio broadcasting stations listed for the island, though with such a large population it would be expected that there should be at least several local community FM stations. There must also be several amateur stations on the island, and of course, shortwave communication stations for the twin airports.

With an area of 35.02 square miles, Siquijor Island is slightly larger than the aforementioned Mactan Island, though with considerably less people, only some 26,000. A daily ferry service operates between Siquijor and Dumaguete.

Likewise, there are no radio broadcasting stations listed for Siquijor Island, though there are communication stations, and of course amateur stations which come in useful for external communication in times of bad weather and other emergency occasions.

According to the current official list, there are seven FM stations in the city of Dumaguete, including the university station DYSR, with the SR indicating Silliman Radio, with 5 kW on 95.1 MHz.