Historians
who are interested in the origins of various foodstuffs tell us that alphabet
soup became popular in the United States soon after the Civil War. Previous to that, the housewife could buy dry
macaroni that was cut into small star shaped pieces at the corner family
operated store, and these could be incorporated into some form of soup in the
home kitchen.
Soon after this disastrous, and we
might add very “uncivil” war,
an ingenious entrepreneur began cutting the dry macaroni into small letters in
the English alphabet. These new shapes
in the soup mixture appealed to growing families, and particularly to children
who liked to play with their food.
We are told that several newspaper
items featured alphabet soup in the 1880s, though the ingredient was still dry
cut macaroni that the housewife made into soup in her own kitchen. These days though, alphabet soup is made by
several manufacturers of ready-to-eat food products, and it is sold in metal
cans.
In Australia, the alphabetic
sequence of wireless station callsigns running from VLA - VLZ was established
more than 100 years ago. Likewise in New
Zealand, they followed their own style of “alphabet soup” for
wireless station callsigns, running from ZLA - ZLZ.
In this edition of Wavescan, we
begin to focus on the whole range of 26 callsigns in New Zealand, with rather
appropriately, the story of the first station in this list, ZLA. Back more than one hundred years ago, work
began simultaneously on the country’s first two high powered wireless
stations, ZLA way up north and ZLB way down south.
Tenders for these two coastal
stations were called in 1910, and the successful bidder was the Australasian
Wireless Company in Sydney, New South Wales.
The electrical equipment for these two wireless stations was
manufactured by the Telefunken company in Germany, and German technicians were
performing the installation procedures under the auspices of the Australasian
Wireless Company in Sydney.
The first of these two wireless
stations, at least in alphabetic order, was located up towards the
very tip of the North Island of New
Zealand, at the base of the northernmost peninsula. It was installed on flat farmland almost half
way between what were the small settlements of Awanui and Kaitaia, about 4
miles from the west coast at Ahipara Bay and a dozen miles from the east coast
at Doubtless Bay. This new wireless
station was constructed for the primary purpose of communication in Morse Code
between New Zealand and Fiji, though subsequently it was in use for
communicating with Sydney in Australia and with ships plying the South Pacific.
This new northern wireless station
was installed on a 100 acre site of flat farming country, 60 acres of which
were needed for the tall tower with its antenna and counterpoise systems. The triangular mild steel tower weighed 60
tons, and it stood at 400 ft high, resting on a ball and socket joint on a
glass insulator. An access ladder ran
inside the triangular steel tower right up to the very top.
The top sections of the double
stranded guy wires acted as an umbrella style radiator, and the insulated ends
of the guy wires were fastened into three huge concrete anchors weighing 150
tons each. The counterpoise earthing
system was suspended on wooden poles 15 feet high and it covered a circle 600
yards wide.
Two additional and considerably
smaller antennas were in use, sometimes at night and occasionally for emergency
occasions. One of the earliest
observations that operators soon discovered regarding the propagation of
wireless signals was that the coverage area was enhanced, during the hours of
night time darkness and also during an eclipse.
The main building for the Awanui Wireless
Station housed the operating equipment, a 30 kW quenched spark system
manufactured by Telefunken. The
receiver, just a simple crystal set receiver, was
operated in an adjoining room. Electric
power was generated by a 70 horse power motor in a separate small
building.
This new wireless station was
activated on March 27, 1913 under the original callsign, NZA, standing for New
Zealand station A at Awanui, and perhaps to a lesser extent Auckland. It was taken into regular service at the end
of the same year, December 18, and by that time the callsign had been modified
from NZA to VLA, due to new international wireless regulations.
During the tragic days of World War
1 in continental Europe, a detachment of 65 soldiers guarded the Awanui
wireless station in New Zealand as a precaution against possible sabotage. This station served as a vital communication
link on behalf of the British Empire for South Pacific operations.
In 1924, the electrical equipment at station
VLA was changed from the Telefunken spark gap operation to electronic valve or
tube operation.
Then in 1927 the callsign was again
amended, this time from VLA to ZLA, due again to a change in international
radio regulations. The old callsign VLA
in New Zealand was taken over for a small communication set on Bruny Island off
the coast of Tasmania, and subsequently for a 100 kW Australian made STC-AWA
transmitter at Radio Australia in Shepparton in Victoria.
However, after only 17 years of on
air service, the venerable wireless/radio communication station that had served
on air under three consecutive callsigns, NZA-VLA-ZLA was closed. It went silent on February 10, 1930; forever,
its communication service no longer needed.
The station was dismantled by its
two last employees, Superintendent Les Elliston (ZL1GR) and Engineer Bill
Walker. The tall tower was felled at the
end of the same year December 1930. Then
four years later, the Lisle family bought the property from the government,
buildings included.
Well, that was indeed the end of the
station, but not the end of the callsign.
A group of amateur radio operators in New Zealand remembered the
importance of their northernmost major wireless station, and they requested a
license for an amateur station to operate in the same location, under a similar
callsign. The commemorative date was
February 10, 1980, the 50th anniversary
of the closure of the station.
The requested callsign ZL1VLA was
granted, and farmer Ricky Lisle cleared the now farm operated building so that
a cluster of five amateur radio transmitters could operate in the same original
operating position as the former wireless station. Museum artifacts were on display at three
different nearby locations to honor the historic occasion.
Also present was the now elderly
last Superintendent during the wireless era, Les Elliston. The entire amateur radio event was staged in
memory of the historic German wireless station that was constructed in North
New Zealand in the era just before the commencement of World War 1.
But again, that was not the end of
the callsign either. Comes the year
1995, and the American communication conglomerate Globe Wireless constructed
its own shortwave communication radio station in the same building at the exact
same location on Wireless Road, (as it is still known) Awanui, under the same
old callsign ZLA.
Globe wireless installed eight Henry transmitters
at 2 kW each in the same transmitter building for their electronic SITOR
service for communication with shipping in South Pacific waters. There was an individual omni directional
vertical array for each marine shortwave band.
Their receiver site was 10 miles
distant, with a bevy of TCI 8074 receivers together with an omni
directional discone antenna for all bands.
Even though this station was located in New Zealand, yet it was
controlled from the Global Wireless headquarters in California in the United
States.
This new ZLA communication station, one of 24
similar stations strategically located around the world, was in use for nearly
20 years, closing somewhere around the year 2014, when Globe Wireless closed
its shortwave stations and sold off to Imarsat.
For the third time, the Awanui wireless/radio station was closed. This time, for ever? Who knows, but in the meantime, New Zealand
sheep can now safely and quietly graze, over this historic radio location.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS 332)
