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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 N537, June 9, 2019

The Radio Scene on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean - 3

In our mini-series on the story of radio transmissions from the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, we have covered the early eras from 1914 up until 1946 in previous editions of our DX program Wavescan. Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago, is 37 miles long, it is mostly covered with coconut trees, and there are no dangerous animals on the island, though there are wild horses and wild donkeys as a leftover from the colonial days.

Diego Garcia is an island of dispute between Great Britain and Mauritius. Let’s see now what happens next in our sequence of information regarding the island called Diego Garcia.

Before we get to the radio scene, though, we note that the first postage stamps issued on Diego Garcia, in 1968, showed a series of land and sea animals from the Seychelles Islands. These stamps were overprinted in black with the initials BIOT, identifying the British Indian Ocean Territory. Since then, the postal service in the British Indian Ocean Territory has issued more than 500 different stamps which have been in use mainly on the capital city island Diego Garcia.

As a result of negotiations between the United States and Great Britain, work on a large joint radio communication station on Diego Garcia began in 1971. Two facilities were constructed.

The transmitter station is located at the northern edge of the island on the western side of the lagoon, adjacent to the south of what was the huge circular Wullenwever receiver station, or the Elephant Cage, as these massive aerial systems were known colloquially. The receiver station is located a dozen miles distant, almost at the southern tip of the island.

Very little has been made known of the technical equipment at the American communications station on Diego Garcia. However, we do know that at least some of their transmitters are rated at 3 kW; the international callsign is NKW; and one of its major purposes is for rapid communication with security personnel and with wide area international events in the Asian and Middle Eastern scene.

In 1978, for example, a total of 78 shortwave frequencies were listed for use at station NKW. This shortwave station is still on the air to this day with the transmission of electronically coded information.

Beginning in the year 2000, AFN-American Forces Network programming was broadcast from NKW and beamed to American forces in Afghanistan. The daytime frequency was 12579 kHz, and the nighttime frequency was 4319 kHz, both in USB (Upper Side Band) mode.

The shortwave channels were heard, and verified, by international radio monitors living in Europe, North America, India, Sri Lanka, and the South Pacific. This program relay was on the air for a period of 15 years, and it came to an end in mid-2015.

Perhaps of even greater interest to the international radio monitor than their program rely on shortwave was their mediumwave station, which was on the air with an irregular callsign, and obviously with approval from the local authorities. The AFRTS American Forces Radio TV station on Diego Garcia identified on air as AFDG, American Forces Diego Garcia, and it was launched as Radio Reindeer with 25 watts on 1475 kHz in 1972.

The original studio and transmitter were housed in a back room in the Special Services Building, and most of the programming was produced locally and very informally. Inserted programming came from AFRTS studios in the United States.

The existence of AFDG mediumwave on Diego Garcia was unrecognized internationally until the noted international radio monitor in Colombo Sri Lanka, Victor Goonetilleke, heard this lonesome and isolated station on 1475 kHz. At that stage it was said to be operating with 50 watts.

Four years later, the station was on the air with an increase in power to 250 watts, though the operating channel was still the split frequency 1475 kHz. Accurate reception reports were received from Japan, New Zealand, India, the Maldive Islands, and Sri Lanka, all of which were ultimately confirmed by the volunteer station staff. Dr. S. Chowdhury, from the Indian DX Club International in Calcutta, visited South India for the express purpose of listening to AFDG and making sample recordings of its programming.

Around the mid-1980s the station moved up 10 kHz to another split channel, 1485 kHz. Then during the year 2015, the mediumwave transmitter, a professionally-made CPA transmitter from the United States, was silenced forever, though the 135 ft. tower still stands.

An FM transmitter with 10 watts on 101.9 MHz began a full-time relay from the mediumwave station in 1978, and nearly 10 years later a new 200 watt transmitter was installed. These days, AFDG is on the air from 2 FM transmitters with separate programming, 99.1 and 101.9 MHz, together with 4 channels of TV at 200 watts each.

In addition, BFBS radio and TV programming from London is also available over the air on Diego Garcia on several channels, some of which are linked with programming from Nepal in the Nepali language. Cable & Wireless was established in Diego Garcia in 1982; and there was an amateur radio station on the island, a club station with the call VQ9X, for a period of nearly 23 years, running from 1991 to 2013.

QSLs from AFDG mediumwave are quite rare, and these were issued by mail and electronically to a few international radio monitors who were fortunate enough to log this exotic little radio station. Victor Goonetilleke heard the station again while on a DXpedition to a small island near Colombo, Sri Lanka and he received two QSLs by post in the same envelope, one verifying his most recent mediumwave logging, and the other verifying an earlier shortwave report.

Another international radio monitor who was living in India at the time heard AFDG Diego Garcia mediumwave while he was on a professional itinerary to the Maldive Islands in 1985. After sending a reception report to the station several times, he received two self-prepared QSL cards through the post, one in 1986 and another in 1987.



Australian Shortwave Callsigns VLQ

The internationally-recognized shortwave callsign VLQ was initially applied to two ocean going New Zealand ships before it was applied to landbased shortwave stations in continental Australia. These two ships were the SS Warrimoo (wo-ree-MOO) and the SS Kanna, and they plied across the Pacific carrying passengers and cargo.

The steamship Warrimoo was built at Newcastle upon Tyne on the northeast coast of England for the Huddart Parker shipping line in 1892. Originally, the planned service area for this ship was across the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia. The name Warrimoo is an Australian Aboriginal name meaning Eagle.

However, soon after it was launched the Warrimoo was withdrawn from the Trans Tasman service and taken into wider service across the Pacific, running from Vancouver in Canada to Australia and New Zealand. At this stage the operation of the ship was subsidized by the governments of Canada, New South Wales and New Zealand. However, when the ship was just four years old, it was taken over by the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand.

At the turn of the century from the 1800s to the 1900s, Captain John Philips on board the Warrimoo took his majestic, almost-new ship to a position in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where it crossed the Equator and the International Date Line at the same time. Right at midnight, the stern of the ship was in the Northern Hemisphere in early winter on Saturday, December 30, 1899. At the same time, the forward part of the ship was in the Southern Hemisphere in early summer on Monday, January 1, 1900.

Thus it was, as the story tells, that the steamer Warrimoo was therefore not only in two different days, but in two different months, two different seasons, two different years, two different centuries, and in two different hemispheres, all at the same time.

According to a shipping notice in April 1912, a new set of wireless equipment was already in use on the Warrimoo, and three years later the callsign was listed as VLQ. Back then, a VL callsign was recognized as a registration for New Zealand.

In 1916 the ship was sold to Singapore, and on May 17 two years later (1918), the ship sank after a collision with the French vessel Catapulte in the Mediterranean. However, even three years later (1921), the VLQ callsign was still shown for the SS Warrimoo.

Subsequently, another cargo/passenger ship belonging to the Union Steamship company in New Zealand was granted the use of the recycled callsign VLQ. This ship was built at Leith in Scotland in 1911, and it was named the SS Kanna, which is also the name of a dubious health supplement.

The SS Kanna initially plied in the Pacific, and it was sold to Japan in 1937 and renamed the Selan Maru. The Japanese navy took over the Selan Maru ship in 1941. However, it was sunk by the US Submarine Snapper northwest of the Bolin (Ogasawara) Islands on October 1, 1944.

The new international shortwave service, Australia Calling, was inaugurated on the birthday of Australia’s Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, on December 21, 1939. Three transmitters at the large AWA shortwave station at Pennant Hills, an outer suburb of the city of Sydney, were identified on air with a VLQ callsign.

The eleven year old VLK became VLQ, the eight year old VLM became VLQ2, and the fifteen year old and rather cumbersome VK2ME became VLQ7. All three of these transmitters were listed at 10 kW each, though we would suggest that this was probably the input electrical power, rather than the radio frequency output power at approximately 5 kW or a little more.

The usage of the VLQ callsign at AWA Pennant Hills lasted for just a little over three years, and in January 1943, a new callsign, VLI, was applied to these same three transmitters. The callsign VLQ was then attached to a new shortwave service from Bald Hills, an outer suburb on the northern side of Brisbane in Queensland.

Interestingly, in the initial test announcements in February 1943, the location for this new shortwave service was given as Sydney, New South Wales, rather than Brisbane in Queensland. Perhaps this was a wartime security measure.

The VLQ shortwave service from Bald Hills was on the air to the outback for half a century, and during this time period three different STC transmitters were in use, each rated at 10 kW. The ABC Home Service shortwave station VLQ left the air in December 1993.

During the previous year, 1992, the callsign VLQ, or the line designation "Q" was introduced to identify a program service from the Melbourne studios of Radio Australia to the Cox Peninsula shortwave station near Darwin in the Northern Territory. This VLQ-Q shortwave programming was on the air to Asia over one of the 250 kW transmitters at Cox Peninsula until this Radio Australia shortwave station was closed in 1997.