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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 303, October 15, 2000
Early Shortwave Broadcasting by the Adventist denomination in North America
It was back in March of the year 1928 that John Fetzer, who was the manager of the mediumwave station WEMC in Berrien Springs, Michigan, made a visit to Washington, DC. His purpose was to lodge an application for the installation of a shortwave transmitter co-sited with his station at the Adventist College in Berrien Springs. What ever happened to this request nobody knows today. Just a year or two later, Fetzer bought the station and transferred it to Kalamazoo as WKZO.
The next attempt on the part of the Adventist denomination to enter the international scene of shortwave broadcasting was during the latter part of World War II. Back somewhere around the year 1944, The Voice of Prophecy radio program, with the illustrious Dr. H. M. S. Richards, was carried worldwide on the shortwave and mediumwave networks of AFRS, the American Forces Radio Service. The shortwave stations in use at the time were located on the east and west coasts of the continental United States.
A concerted effort for wider coverage by shortwave radio from the United States took place in the mid-1980s. The old DX program from the original AWR-Asia in India was on the air for a short period of time from station WRNO in New Orleans, Louisiana. This 100 kw transmitter also carried Adventist programming in Russian and Ukrainian for coverage into Eastern Europe.
This same DX program, Radio Monitors International, was also on the air for varying time periods from WHRI near Indianapolis and from KCBI in Dallas, Texas. These relays of programming produced in the AWR studios in Southern Asia were arranged by the well known Jeff White, who is now with WRMI, his own shortwave station in Miami, Florida.
Other shortwave relays of Adventist programming have been heard from KVOH in Los Angeles, California, from WVHA near Bangor in Maine, and from KTBN in Salt Lake City, Utah. And more recently, beginning on New Year's Day 1995, station WRMI in Miami began the broadcast of the current DX program Wavescan on a regular weekly basis.
Occasional relays of Wavescan have also been heard over other shortwave stations in the United States, including WBCQ in Monticello, Maine, WGTG in McCaysville, Georgia, and WWCR in Nashville, Tennessee.
Now, up in Canada, Adventist programming has also been heard at times on shortwave. Over a period of many years, the syndicated radio program, The Voice of Prophecy, has been aired on many local mediumwave stations throughout Canada. When The Voice of Prophecy has been broadcast by a local mediumwave station that also has a shortwave transmitter in tandem relay, then the same program is, of course, heard on shortwave. It is known that at least four of these little shortwave stations have carried The Voice of Prophecy at some time: CFVP, Calgary; CFRX, Toronto; CHNX, Halifax; and CFCX, Montreal.
The shortwave transmitters of Radio Canada International at Sackville in New Brunswick have also occasionally carried Adventist programming, such as the BBC relay from an Adventist church in England, and the relay from Radio Korea International of this DX program,