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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 N623, January 31, 2021

Back to the Radio Scene on the South Pacific Chatham Islands

Three weeks back, we presented our opening topic on the radio scene in the isolated South Pacific Chatham Islands. The radio story in that presentation featured the Maritime Wireless/Radio Station under the consecutive callsigns VLC and ZLC during the era from its inauguration in 1913 until it was officially closed in 1991.

Interestingly, for the past many years a postal style cancellation identifying Radio Chatham Islands has been listed for sale on eBay and it is still available to this day. The clearly-marked cancellation date is March 23, 1916, when the station was just three years old, and the asking price is $130.

The date for the official closure of station ZLC near Waitangi Beach on Chatham Island is listed in the government files in New Zealand, some 500 miles distant, as August 30, 1991. At the time, the local fishermen in the Chathams bewailed the loss of this important radio communication service.

The historical files in New Zealand do not show the station in use after that time, though, as far as is known, the station is still on the air under the authority of the New Zealand government to this day. Interestingly, various listings as shown in radio publications in different parts of the world in this subsequent era show its various operating frequencies and callsigns.

For example, in 1992, ZLC7 is listed on 5254 kHz; in 1997, ZLC is listed on 2104 kHz; in 2003, ZLC3 is listed on 7740 kHz. An aerial photograph of station ZLC near Radio Beach is available on Google Earth, dated January 6, 2019, and it shows the well-groomed property of station ZLC on the northwest side of Owenga Road. Included in the picture is what appears to be a satellite receiving dish.

Although we have made contact with local officials on Chatham Island, no return information has been received. The only answer to this puzzle would seem to be that the station, still under national New Zealand registration, was taken over by local authorities on the island. Maybe some of the well-known international radio monitors in New Zealand can provide an answer.

Back during the 1950s, Maritime ZLC was in use also for daily communication with a network of several other smaller stations scattered throughout the Chatham Islands. At the time, half a dozen shortwave transmitters were available at ZLC for various local and regional communication purposes.

A self-prepared QSL card dated in 1954 shows a total of five regional communication stations in the Chathams, and these were listed as ZLEC, ZLEG, ZLBE, ZMWO and ZLDD. It is known that one of these stations was installed at Kaingaroa, near the elementary school on the northeast coast.

A community FM radio station, Radio Weka, was inaugurated on December 11, 1991 with 25 watts on 92.1 MHz under the callsign 3WKA. The identification slogan of this station, Radio Weka, honors the local Weka Bird that has the unusual habit of giving a cooee call each morning and evening as a male and female duet.

Radio Weka was on the air for a number of years, but it was last listed in the 2009 issue of the WRTVHB. Here's a clip from that opening morning when the station was inaugurated on the morning of December 11, 1991.

Audio Insert: Radio Weka 92.1 MHz

Kiwi DXer Arthur De Maine visited the Chatham Islands last year (2020), and he states that a local FM station was indeed on the air, though somewhat intermittently, with the identification slogan, The Sound, on 89.3 FM. So although Radio Weka is no longer on the air, this current FM station would seem to be a revival of the local community station, and perhaps using The Sound, which is a New Zealand network, as a sustaining service.

An official repeater station for Radio National, with a program relay from New Zealand, was also on the air for a while on FM 89.7 MHz. There was also a local TV station on the air in Waitangi, though it was closed when satellite TV became available.

Over the years there have been half a dozen amateur radio stations on the air at Waitangi and the operators were usually associated with the Maritime Communication Station ZLC. During the era before World War II, the Chatham amateur prefix was ZL2, such as with ZL2XL in 1933; and in more recent time the prefix has been ZL7, such as with ZL7STU last year (2020).

Pitt island

The second largest island in the Chatham archipelago is Pitt Island, and the only other island that is inhabited, approximately 10 miles by 4 miles, with a population of less than 40. It is more rugged than the 12 mile distant Chatham, and it was named in honor of the same William Pitt who was the first Earl of Chatham, after whom the Chatham Islands were named. The callsign for the small communication station on Pitt Island is ZLET.


Ancient DX Report: 1923

The radio scene throughout the world during the year 1923 was characterized by two major developments: the proliferation of radio broadcasting stations, on longwave, mediumwave and shortwave; and the proliferation of very high powered communication stations. These 1923 international radio developments were concentrated mainly in Europe and North America, though similar activity on a smaller scale was evident in a large number of countries elsewhere.

The original BBC in London, the British Broadcasting Company, received a broadcasting license from the Post Office on January 18, 1923, thus formalizing the four mediumwave stations that it had taken over during the previous year (1922). These four stations as listed in the book BBC Engineering, were:

We should mention that the first radio broadcasting station in England was the Marconi station 2MT at Writtle in Essex, which was inaugurated with 200 watts on 700 m. (428 kHz longwave) on February 14, 1922. However, this station was never taken over by the BBCo; it was closed very early in the year 1923 (January 17), and in reality it was superseded by the better known 2LO in London.

During the year 1923, the BBCo installed five more mediumwave broadcasting stations, and these were:

On the longwave scene, the British Post Office procured 800 acres near Rugby for the erection of a powerful longwave station. The Rugby station, with its primary callsign GBR, was intended to become the key station for an empire-wide longwave communication system reaching from England to Australia that included several intermediate relay stations.

On the continent, the American RCA company installed a longwave communication station near Warsaw in Poland; and a French company installed a similar station near Belgrade in what was Yugoslavia. Holland installed a communication station at Assel for communication with Malabar on the island of Java in what was its East Indies colony. Denmark constructed a wireless station for communication between its capital city Copenhagen and the island of Bornholm in the southern Baltic.

During the year 1923 the broadcast of radio programming, music concerts and information bulletins began in several European countries, including France, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Denmark and Italy.

Over in North America, mediumwave broadcasting stations were proliferating at a rapid rate, and a station list for August 1923 shows more than 600 stations. At that stage, the licensing authority, the Department of Commerce, was just beginning to allow stations to operate on their own set frequency, beyond the two original standard channels, 360 m. and 480 m. (833 kHz and 618 kHz).

May 15, 1923 was the date when each station would be permitted to move out from the two highly-congested channels (833 kHz and 618 kHz) to its own officially-licensed new channel. At that stage, 54 channels were assigned to mediumwave stations in the United States, ranging from 550 kHz to 1350 kHz, and that was the beginning of what has since become the international standard mediumwave broadcast band.

Back at that stage, it was reported that the best-known radio station in the world was the navy transmitter NAA with its three self-supporting towers at Arlington in Virginia. Station NAA gained its popularity due to its high-powered transmitters, and the regularly scheduled broadcast of time signals. Announcements were given in regular speech and also in Morse Code.

Radio broadcasting stations were inaugurated during the year 1923 in the South American countries of Argentina and Brazil. The huge wireless communication station at Monte Grande in Argentina used two transmitters at 400 kW each and a total of 10 self-standing towers 700 feet tall, supporting the antenna system that stretched for nearly 3 miles.

In Honolulu Hawaii, experimental station KUO made a one-day broadcast from the roof of the Examiner newspaper building; in Australia the first two mediumwave stations were inaugurated, 2BL (as 2SB) and 2FC (longwave 273 kHz), both in Sydney; and in New Zealand, 11 broadcasting stations were on the air.

Interestingly, broadcasting station callsigns in Australia began with a number, ranging from 2 through 7, and in New Zealand, 1 through 4. However, the first letter in the Australian callsigns generally varied from A-W (such as 2AD and 2WG). However, in New Zealand the first letter generally varied only from just Y and Z (such as 2YA and 4ZB).

The American radio magazine Radio Broadcast for December 1923 (103) made the following observation regarding what we now call shortwave: The work of Franklin (in the United States) and Marconi in England, together with the work of the Westinghouse Company and the Bureau of Standards in this country, prove beyond a doubt the feasibility of employing a range of frequencies at present used by no one. Actual experiments show this range (above 3 MHz) to be perfectly workable.

Yes indeed, and the KDKA shortwave station 8XS was inaugurated in 1923, and shortwave broadcasting also began to escalate.