Jack Brown interviews Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart for broadcast to troops overseas on AFRS during World War II |
While the passenger airliner was
flying high over Turkey, he was invited into the flight deck of the passenger
airliner and given the use of one of the plane’s
radio receivers. He tuned the radio to
1590 kHz and heard his desired station, the low powered AFRS American Forces
Radio Station which was installed in the American Air Base near Adana, in the
Mediterranean corner of Turkey.
At the same time as he was seated in
the comfortable high flying airplane, he could see in the distance the clear
figure of Mt Ararat, covered in brilliant white snow. Mt Ararat is a reminder of another method of
travel, in a long distant era, with a huge wooden boat, Noah’s
Ark, the remains of which are said to be in that area to this day.
In due course, a do-it-yourself,
self-prepared tourist travel QSL card, replete with American postage stamps,
was received. This card, with full QSL
details, verified AFRS Adana, with just 10 watts on 1590 kHz. Interestingly, the wavelength is shown as
61886.792 feet which is actually a mistake in calculation. By moving the decimal place by two positions,
the equivalent is indeed 1590 kHz.
This unusual QSL card features a unique
threesome: a receiver in the flight deck of a passenger airliner, a low powered
medium wave station on the ground, and a wavelength measured in feet, not
metres.
(AWR Wavescan/NWS 295 via Adrian Peterson)
(photo/wikipedia)