I
It was in 1939 that the pioneer
shortwave station operated by the radio entrepreneur Walter S. Lemmon was
transferred from the city of Boston down south to what is now a beach resort
area nearly 25 miles distant. This is
what happened.
Walter
Lemmon at WWBC, the World Wide Broadcasting Corporation in Boston, applied for
a Construction Permit for a second shortwave transmitter, and this CP was
granted for 20 kW W1XAR at an approved location in Norwood in suburban Boston
on February 27, 1939. Work on the
construction of this new transmitter was undertaken by the Chief Engineer, the
well known TV pioneer Hollis Baird.
In
the Spring of this same year 1939, two recently acquired mobile shortwave
transmitters were taken to various locations in and around Boston for the
purpose of making a series of test broadcasts in order to find a suitable
location for a new permanent station.
These two low power portable stations, rated at around 250 watts or less
we would guess, were activated simultaneously at several different locations.
Although
it is not known just how many different locations were chosen for these test
transmissions, yet it is understood that tests were made from at least three
locales; two nearby locations in Norwood in suburban Boston, and another down
the coast at Hatherly Beach. On air
requests were made for reception reports for the test transmissions at each of
the various locations, though there are no known QSL cards verifying these test
broadcasts, due no doubt to the low power of the two transmitters.
When
the series of test transmission was completed, a site in the Boston suburb of
Norwood was chosen as the location for a permanent home for the two broadcast
transmitters, W1XAL & W1XAR. The FCC
gave approval for this move, though the official document showed the wrong
address as 1218 State Highway, apparently one of the previously approved test
locations. However, a subsequent FCC
document corrected the address, which was a vacant area a little west of
Providence Highway and north of Morse Street.
The
first test broadcasts from the new W1XAR went on the air from Norwood on the
same date as the CP was granted, February 27, 1939, and two frequencies were in
use, 11730 & 15130 kHz. One QSL card
in the Indianapolis Heritage Collection dated March 19,1939 shows the callsign
altered to W1XAR and it verifies reception on 11730 kHz. This card was issued to a listener in Canada,
and the timing would suggest that it verified a transmission from the very
temporary site at Norwood.
However,
it was soon discovered that the new Norwood location was not as good as was
previously expected, so the transmitter was closed down and returned to the
Boston location at 870 Brookline Avenue.
Thus it was that plans were enacted for relocation to an isolated spot
further down the coast.
Back
around the time when World War 1 broke out in Europe, mid 1918, the American
army acquired a lease on a total property of more than one hundred acres from
several private owners at Hatherly Beach.
This property was located just off the beach area, about one and half
miles north of Scituate town, and a spur line was installed as a connection to
the nearby railway system operated by the New York, New Haven & Hartford
Railway.
During
the war era, this property was in use as a storage area for war weapons, and as
a testing ground for different forms of ammunition. In 1921, the total area was returned to its
original owners.
In
1939 (apparently not 1936 as sometimes listed), Walter Lemmon took out a lease
on a forty acre section of what had been the Army Proving Ground, which
included the main power plant building and a few smaller buildings. This isolated location became the home for
the new transmitter facility of the mighty WRUW during the era of World War 2.
On
July 21, 1939, the shortwave station in Boston was closed for the purpose of
moving the electronic equipment into the newly acquired radio property at
Hatherly Beach. The two shortwave
transmitters, still officially under the older callsigns W1XAL and W1XAR, were
upgraded to 20 kW each and they were installed in the 20 year old building that
previously housed the army power generation equipment. A new radiation system was installed, a total
of seven new antennas.
This
new radio broadcasting station was activated at this new location a little over
a month later on August 25 under the new though temporary callsigns WSLA and
WSLR. Then thirteen days later, the
callsigns of these two transmitters were amended again; W1XAL-WSLA became WRUL,
and W1XAR-WSLR became WRUW. Soon
afterwards, the station callsign, WRUL, was painted on the large chimney stack
on the radio property.
At
the time of the transfer from Boston to Scituate, Walter Lemmon made an appeal
for funding due to the heavy cost involved in the move and to the upgrading of
the equipment with the two locally made transmitter amplifiers. During the following year, the federal
government did provide a financial grant to the station because of its
strategic location and its significant coverage areas towards Europe and
Africa.
In May 1940, WRUL was noted with
test broadcasts in co-operation with shortwave station TG2 in Guatemala City;
and during the year 1941, WRUL was noted with special programming that was on
relay by the BBC London and by FZI Brazzaville in the Congo in Africa. And sometimes, they were on the air with a
program of practice in the usage of Morse Code.
Another special
program from WRUL, under the title “Your Friendship Bridge”, featured English
refugee children giving greetings to their parents in England. This 15 minute daily program was produced in
the studios of mediumwave WMCA in New York and fed by landline to Boston for
incorporation into their shortwave programming.
This program relay was also broadcast by the BBC in England.
In 1942, WRUL opened an additional
studio in the center of New York City, at 630 5th Avenue; and in
September 1940, WRUL bought at a remarkably low price the shortwave transmitter
W4XB-WBKM-WDJM in Miami Florida. This
1932 model home brew transmitter was in reality two units at 5 kW each. (Six years earlier, that is in 1932, Walter
Lemmon had requested the FRC, the Federal Radio Commission, to deny a license
to mediumwave WIOD in Miami to operate a shortwave relay transmitter.)
It took Engineer John Hall more than
a year to reassemble the pieces of equipment from Florida into a workable
transmitter, and test broadcasts began in January 1942. This composite transmitter is sometimes
listed incorrectly, at this stage, under the callsign WRUX.
However, all available monitoring
observations during this era, as heard in the United States, New Zealand and
Australia, give the call as WRUS. It is
understood that the call WRUS was intended to identify; WR for the company
cluster of calls, and the final two letters US, to identify the United States.
This
temporary auxiliary unit WRUS at Scituate was on the air with 5 kW on only one
channel 6040 kHz, the same channel when it was on the air as WDJM in
Florida. As WRUS, it was sometimes heard
as far away as Australia, and it always carried the same programming in
parallel relay with the other two transmitters WRUL & WRUW. This low powered transmitter was retired in
early 1943, and the temporary FCC authorization was cancelled in April.
This
temporary WRUS was then replaced by a 50 kW transmitter (a double unit) with
the same callsign, and that’s our story when we look at the background history
of shortwave WYFR on the next occasion.
(AWR/Wavescan/NWS 245)