The radio story in that the 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 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 the habit of giving cooee call each morning and
evening as a male and female duet.
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 of the 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.
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 2, 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).
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 miles distant
Chatham, and it was named in
honor of the same William Pitt who was the 1st Earl of Chatham after whom the
Chatham Islands were named. The callsign
for the small communication station on Pitt Island is ZLET. (AWR/Wavescan 623) photo NASA