At the present time, relief and recovery are underway on the many islands in the Caribbean that were devastated by the recent string of hurricanes that swept through the area. However at the same time, there is a lot of turmoil and chaos due to the destruction of so much of the basic infrastructure in these islands, with the lack of availability of necessities and commodities, such as food, water, gasoline, electricity, and even satisfactory accommodation.
In today’s edition of the AWR DX program Wavescan,
we again focus on the radio scene in the Caribbean as a tribute to the people
who live in these islandic countries. We
present our opening topic under the title, International Shortwave Broadcasting
in the Caribbean Islands, the story of six major shortwave stations in the
Caribbean, and we begin with the earliest, Radio Antilles on the Island of
Montserrat.
On April 20, 1963, the Radio
Antilles Corporation was formed, and five months later the government granted a
radio broadcasting license. Much of the
electronic equipment for the Montserrat station came from the previous Radio
Africa in Tangier, Morocco and it was installed and operated with co-operation
from the staff of Radio Andorra in Europe.
Some eight years later (1971), Radio
Deutsche Welle DW in Germany injected a massive cash flow into Radio Antilles,
and as a major shareholder/new owner of the station they took over the
operation of the large facility. When DW
engineers arrived on Montserrat in 1971, they found two shortwave transmitters
at 15 kW each already installed. They
soon afterwards installed an additional shortwave transmitter at 50 kW among
the medium wave transmitters on the ground floor of the two story building on
the lower south west coast of the island of Montserrat.
However at the same time as Radio
Antilles was under development as a relay station for Deutsche Welle and the
BBC, a new joint operation was under installation on the nearby island of
Antigua. The development of this new
international shortwave relay station was staged under the auspices of a joint
holding company, the Caribbean Relay Company.
After a series of surveys on several
of the Leeward and Windward Islands, Antigua was chosen because of its
strategic location, together with sufficiently level ground that would be
satisfactory for a large antenna farm. A
tract of land, 240 acres, was procured near Seaview Farm in the center of the
island of Antigua.
The
BBC designed and constructed the transmitter station, they installed 4 Marconi
transmitters at 250 kW each Model BD272, and they erected 7 antenna towers
supporting 18 curtain antennas. The
locally available electrical power was somewhat unreliable, so the BBC
installed 5 electrical power generators, each a Ruston at 1 megawatt, which was
sufficient to power the entire station with 1 always available on standby.
The first transmitter was taken into
service on November 1, 1976, and the other three were activated during the
following year (1977). Original
planning called for 2 transmitters and 9 antennas each, for the BBC and
DW. However, as the scheduling was
developed and implemented as time went by, it appears that the programming of
both shortwave organizations, the BBC and DW, was carried by all 4 of the
transmitters, though at approximately half time each.
Due to budget cuts, the BBC-DW relay
station on Antigua was closed on March 26, 2005. Initially, the Caribbean Relay Station
endeavored to find other clients who were willing to broadcast to the Americas
from their shortwave station. However,
there are no known additional relays from the Antigua station, and all that we
can presume is that all usable equipment was removed and the property was sold
off.
We cross over now to the Dutch
islands in the Caribbean, and in particular to Curacao and Bonaire. Around the year 1960, Trans World Radio TWR
gave consideration to constructing a large shortwave/mediumwave station on the island
of Curacao. However, the entire project
was soon afterwards transferred to the nearby island of Bonaire.
Construction at TWR Bonaire began in
September 1963, and the first test broadcasts on shortwave began almost a year
later in August 1964. The very first
shortwave frequency for the new TWR
was 5955 kHz under the official Dutch callsign PJB.
Beginning in November 1964, the new
Bonaire shortwave station broadcast the programming from Trans World Radio and
it also relayed programming from Radio Netherlands in Hilversum Holland. However, Radio Netherlands ended their relay
via TWR soon after their own shortwave station on Bonaire was inaugurated.
On June 30, 1993, TWR closed down
the usage of their two shortwave transmitters on Bonaire, one at 50 kW and
another at 250 kW, and shipped them off to Swaziland for incorporation into
their African shortwave station.
However, in various configurations, a mediumwave station at TWR has
remained on the air on Bonaire, and the space that was previously occupied by
the shortwave transmitters now houses power generators that provide electricity
for the island.
Test transmissions from the new
relay station operated by Radio Netherlands on the island of Bonaire began in
March 1969. At the height of its total
capability RN Bonaire contained 3 shortwave transmitters at 250/300 kW, 21
antennas on 17 towers, and 6 power generators at 500 kW each.
However, with the changing winds of
fortune in the international shortwave world, Radio Netherlands Bonaire was closed
on June 30, 2012. The station was
totally dismantled and all that remains of this once majestic shortwave station
is just an open field.
Radio Havana Cuba was organized as a
government operated international shortwave facility in 1963. At that stage, 4 shortwave transmitters at
100 kW were installed at their shortwave station at Bauta near Havana, 2 from
Russia and 2 from BBC (Brown Boveri Company) Switzerland. These days, Radio Havana Cuba operates a total
of 3 shortwave sites with 16 shortwave transmitters rated at 50 kW, 100 kW and
250 kW.
The shortwave station known as the
Caribbean Beacon is located on the island of Anguilla, a small British island
in the eastern Caribbean. In June 1991,
Dr. Gene Scott bought the mediumwave station Caribbean Beacon, and he installed
a new Continental 100 kW shortwave transmitter at the same Sandy Hill
site. The antenna system was previously
in use with shortwave KGEI at Belmont in California.
The new shortwave Caribbean Beacon
was inaugurated in December 1996, though it was hounded by subsequent local
fears about radiation problems for more than a year. During the year 2008, the shortwave station
previously on the air under the callsigns KUSW and then KTBN was closed and the
electronic equipment was shipped to Anguilla for incorporation into the
Caribbean Beacon.
As we mentioned previously here in
Wavescan, the Caribbean Beacon was damaged in the recent hurricanes that swept
through the Caribbean islands. The
station has since been noted back on the air with test broadcasts, and it is
doing its best to maintain its international shortwave service.
This has been the story of six
international shortwave stations in the Caribbean. A total of four have come and gone: Deutsche
Welle-BBC Montserrat and Antigua, Trans World Radio and Radio Netherlands on
Bonaire. Two still remain: Radio Havana
Cuba with 16 transmitters, and the Caribbean Beacon on Anguilla with 1 at 100
kW, hanging on tenuously after the onslaught of the recent hurricanes.
(AWR Wavescan/NWS)