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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

American DX Report


Adventist World Radio - AWR Wavescan - DX Program

* USA: Currently, there is a concerted effort on the part of radio afficianados to rescue the high powered “Voice of America” international shortwave station located near Delano in California. If their efforts are successful, this station will not be demolished, but instead it will be preserved for possible use in the future, as coming political and international events may suggest. This VOA station near the American Pacific coast was constructed towards the end of World War 2, and over the years it has been modernized and updated as newer equipment has become available. The coverage area for VOA Delano has been the many countries on the Pacific rim and also Latin America. You can read about the rescue efforts that have already been implemented by checking their website at radionational.org and also by entering VOA Delano into Youtube.

* Canada: The 1 kW shortwave station located near Toronto in Ontario has recently been renovated and re-activated. With a new transmitter and a new antenna system, this station CFRX can be heard again on its familiar channel 6070 kHz, with a relay from the parent mediumwave station, CFRB on 1010 kHz. However, monitoring observations at our location in Indianapolis, 550 miles southwest of Toronto, indicate that the new antenna system is apparently oriented more for Canadian coverage rather than omni-directional coverage as it was in years gone by. The signal in Indiana is quite poor and unreliable, though it can be heard occasionally with a readable signal.

* New Guinea: Adventist World Radio has contributed half of the funds required for establishing an FM station at the Pacific Adventist University in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Although the Seventh-day Adventist denomination has been on the air on multiple occasions from the radio stations throughout Papua New Guinea, this new 1 kW FM station is the first Adventist owned radio station in this country. The university campus is located at Boroko, on the edge of Port Moresby, and the target date for the initial test broadcasts from this new radio station has been some time during this month of November.

* India: Jose Jacob, VU2JOS in Hyderabad, reported on November 16 that AIR Port Blair was noted on 4765 kHz instead of the usual 4760 kHz, thus enabling listeners to tune in AIR Leh which was previously co-channel with Port Blair.

* Indonesia: The BBC Monitoring Service reports that there are sixty two radio stations on the air on the holiday island of Bali. Because of this congestion on the radio dial, the licensing authorities state that no channels are available for new radio stations on Bali.

* Namibia: BBC Monitoring also reports that NBC, The Namibia Broadcasting Commission is heavily in debt, to the amount of $250 million. The management of NBC in Windhoek is appealing to their government for financial aid in order to survive.

* Thailand: A report from Andy Sennitt via Jerry Berg states that the BBC relay station located in northern Thailand was taken off the air at the end of the first week in November due to local flooding. Some of the BBC programming was transferred to the Radio Netherlands relay station located on the island of Madagascar.

* Romania: According to Alokesh Gupta in India via Cumbre DX, Romania issued a new postage stamp and also a new coin on November 1 to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of radio broadcasting in their country.

*Australia: A report in the October issue of the Australian DX News states that HCJB Australia has received approval to construct a new shortwave station on an adjoining property at Kununurra at the top of Western Australia. It is intended that all of the transmission facilities located on the original property will ultimately be transferred to the adjacent new location.

* Australia: The same issue of ADXN also states that the transmitter facilities of Radio Netherlands at Flevo in Holland are in the process of being dismantled, though it is not known yet as to what will happen to all of this equipment and the transmitter building.

* USA: And now an interesting old item of news as our final item in this edition of American DX Report; and we take you to Chicago Illinois, on the edge of the Great Lakes. Back three quarters of a century ago, the mediumwave station WLS in Chicago reported that they received a total of 1,051,041 letters from listeners in the year 1934.
(Source: Dr. Adrian M. Peterson/Adventist World Radio
DX Editor Box 29235
adrian@awr.org
Indianapolis, Indiana 46229 USA
(National Online Project)