 |
| Radio Island, Beaufort, North Carolina |
Our thanks to RayRobinson and Jeff White for this week's Wavescan special on Radio Islands.
Jeff: There are actually five different usages of the two-word title, "Radio Island". Two of these "Radio Islands" are real geographic islands, one in Canada and the other in the United States. There were also two movie shorts with the title “Radio Island” – one produced in 1997 and the other in 2022. And there has been a CBC radio program on the air nationwide in Canada called "Radio Island", or more correctly, "Radio Island Morning".
In this edition of Wavescan, we’re taking a look at the two ‘Radio Islands’ that are real geographic territories. Here’s Ray Robinson to tell us more.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Yes, as you said, the first of these islands is a Canadian territory, in the far north of the country. At the southern tip of Baffin Island, there’s a small cluster of islands, the largest of which is called Resolution Island. And just off the southern tip of Resolution Island, there’s a hilly, almost barren piece of rock, maybe half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, called Radio Island, which is connected to another island at low tide by an isthmus. This area is now part of the Canadian province of Nunavut.
There are two reasons why this seemingly insignificant piece of rock was even dignified with a name:
1) there’s an underground source of natural gas on the island, and
2) its location and proximity to the North West Passage makes it an ideal place to site an aid to navigation.
And indeed, it was back in 1929 that the Canadian government first established a radio station on Radio Island. The purpose for the station was to serve as a navigational aid for both aircraft and shipping in the area, and also to transmit weather information. The callsign of the station was VBY.
During the cold war era in the 1950s, the station on Radio Island was augmented with American forces and equipment as part of the Early Warning System. This network of missile detection early warning radio stations and radio facilities was known by the Americans as the Dewline, and by the Canadians as the Pinetree Line.
In addition to the electronic facilities of the Early Warning System, there was also a small entertainment radio station on Radio Island for the American forces stationed there, with the unusual callsign, WORM. This station was little more than an amplifier kit, though on occasions it was hooked up to a 500 watt transmitter, just for the fun of it. On several occasions, flight personnel on passing passenger planes tuned in to this novel radio station, and phoned through, asking for music requests to be played on air.
On important local occasions, station WORM also relayed another AFRS entertainment station, located at Frobisher Bay, about 120 miles to the northwest on Baffin Island. That AFRS station identified on air with the callsign K-I-M-O, or KIMO, as in SKIMO, and it too was a low power affair with just a 10 watt transmitter on 1010 kHz.
So now we turn our attention to the other Radio Island, the one in the United States. This island is located almost exactly halfway along the Atlantic coast of North Carolina, midway between the borders with Virginia and South Carolina. That area has quite a few claims to fame:
• A little further north on the Outer Banks is the community of Kitty Hawk, from which the Wright Brothers made their first adventurous flight in a heavier-than-air powered and controlled aircraft in December 1903.
• The notorious English pirate known as Blackbeard terrorized shipping that entered the area more than 300 years ago.
• And, the mysterious Lost Colony of Roanoke was established on an island in this area more than 400 years ago.
Well, the Radio Island in North Carolina is an artificial island about four or five acres in size that was formed during a dredging operation in the estuary of the Pamlico River further north back in the 1920’s and 30’s. The island lies in the mouth of the Newport River, in the sound between the mainland and the Outer Banks. The city of Beaufort is about 1 mile to the east of the island, and Moorhead City is 2 miles to the west. These days, the island is a tourist resort, with fishing facilities, new condos, holiday homes and a marina. It’s also used for the storage of oil in huge holding tanks, and it’s well known by wildlife lovers as a refuge for the LeConte’s Sparrow – one of the smallest sparrow species in North America.
Some years ago, a historian working in the library of the County Historical Museum in downtown Moorhead City told our editor-in-chief, Dr. Adrian Peterson, that this artificial island was named Radio Island because a radio station was installed on it back in the 1930’s. The callsign of the station, he said, was WMBM, which was interpreted to mean, “Where Moorhead and Beaufort Meet.”
This medium wave station, WMBM, must have been quite a small operation, with just low power, and it must have been on the air for only a brief period of time. There’s no listing for it in any of the records we hold. In fact, the only station that we could find with the callsign WMBM during that pre-war era was a small radio station operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
The radio station WMBM on Radio Island in North Carolina served the small cities and communities on both sides of the Newport River Estuary. Dr. Peterson asked the county historian what happened to the station, and he simply replied that it has long since gone.
Back to you, Jeff.
(Ray Robinson/NWS)
