Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for this week's edition of Wavescan.
100 Years of Radio Broadcasting in Indonesia
Jeff: In our feature this week, we conclude our two-part visit to Indonesia, which this month is celebrating the centenary of radio broadcasting in their country. Here once again is Ray Robinson at the Voice of Hope studios in Los Angeles.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. RRI, Radio Republik Indonesia, was founded on September 11, 1945, with headquarters in central Jakarta. Following the Japanese occupation during World War II, Indonesia initially came under Australian administration from 1945-1946, and the AAAS, or Australian Army Amenities Service, ran a 21-station network of low power shortwave transmitters until the Dutch colonial authorities were ready to retake control of the country and its radio facilities. After a three year period of conflict, the Dutch then finally granted independence to Indonesia in 1949.
Throughout the 1950’s and 60’s, a plethora of low power tropical band shortwave transmitters were used by RRI for local coverage. But in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, plans were implemented to replace most of those tropical band transmitters with medium wave ones. Interestingly, it wasn’t until the 1973 edition of the WRTH that any medium wave stations were listed, but Wavescan’s editor-in-chief, Dr. Adrian Peterson, did hear some operating during visits he made to the country as early as 1968.
Well, as part of RRI’s plans, in 1967 they decided to provide nationwide coverage for domestic programming, especially to rural areas and remote islands, using high power shortwave. For this, they constructed a new shortwave transmission site at Cimanggis, about a dozen miles south of downtown Jakarta. The first transmitter installed there was a 100 kW Telefunken unit, Model SST338, made in Germany. Callsigns in Indonesia before World War II were in the Dutch ‘P’ series, and afterwards in the independent Indonesian ‘Y’ series. Accordingly, this new transmitter was assigned the call YDF.
Unfortunately, the story of shortwave broadcasting from Cimanggis is the saga of an almost constant supply of new transmitters which replaced earlier ailing ones; brought about by the harsh tropical climate with its high temperatures and monsoonal rains, and worsened by financial shortages and poorly trained staff.
There were times also when the delivery of electricity from the national grid
was insufficient to energize the high-powered transmitters.
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| Classic QSL card from VOI Indonesia |
In his monumental compilation of shortwave transmitter histories, “Transmitter Documentation Project 1998”, Ludo Maes in Belgium presented this following litany of shortwave transmitters that were installed over the years at RRI Cimanggis:-
1967 1 Telefunken Germany 100 kW SST338
1970 4 Philips Holland 50 & 120 8FZ514 & 8FZ515
1974 2 Funkwerk Germany 100
1982 3 Harris USA 100 SW100
1983 1 Thomson France 250 TRE2320
On May 21, 1984, the completed installation at Cimanggis with four new transmitters (the 3 Harris 100’s and the Thomson 250) was taken into service,
and the then President Suharto presided at an official commissioning ceremony.
This cluster of four transmitters was intended to provide RRI Home Service programming on a nationwide basis as a national unifying factor.
The three 100 kW transmitters relayed the RRI programming to the westward islands, and the 250 kW transmitter beamed the same programming eastward.
Then in 1992, RRI announced plans for a new overseas service called the Voice of Indonesia, to provide information about Indonesia to people around the world. For this new Voice of Indonesia, RRI ordered another seven 250 kW Marconi B6131 shortwave transmitters from England, together with 20 curtain antennas for installation at both Cimanggis and at another site on Sulawesi Island. All this new equipment was progressively installed over the next three years, and then the new double facility was officially inaugurated on September 14, 1996.
In September 2005, international radio monitors in Australia were surprised to hear
Radio Australia programming being relayed over RRI shortwave in Indonesia.
This program relay in the Bahasa (ba-HAH-sa) Indonesian language was educational in nature and it was presented under the title Kang Guru (Kangaroo).
These days, the WRTH lists the Voice of Indonesia with just one broadcast in English, daily except Saturdays to North America at 0800 UTC on 7780 kHz with 40 kW from a site at Palangkaraya in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. Other languages are heard daily to South East Asia on 3325 kHz from that same site, and also on 4755 kHz from Cimanggis, south of Jakarta.
RRI has several radio channels with broadcasts for Indonesia and abroad, serving all Indonesian citizens throughout the nation and overseas. Extensive use of medium wave transmitters is still made for the domestic audience, along with a network of FM transmitters that carry RRI’s four domestic program services. There are also hundreds of privately-owned FM stations, and a growing use of digital radio, especially in Jakarta, on DAB+.
Over the years, many international radio monitors around the globe have been successful in logging RRI, and their reception reports have netted an invaluable QSL card. During the past 80 years since RRI was founded in 1945, they have issued a variety of QSL cards, usually in color; some as artistic renderings of Indonesian symbols, and some showing photos of various Indonesian cities.
Back to you, Jeff.
(Ray Robinson/Wavescan)
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