On
a previous occasion here in Wavescan, some three weeks back, we presented the
story about abandoned radio stations in the United States, of which there seems
to be quite many. In this our topic for
today, Abandoned Radio Stations in other
countries, we take the countries in alphabetic order. Hence, Australia seems to be at the top of
the list.
In the city of Melbourne, there are
two radio facilities that were previously in use by the well known mediumwave
station 3AW. In March 2010, station 3AW
moved its studios from a downtown building into a new facility at suburban
Docklands.
It was originally intended that the
downtown building housing the previous studios of 3AW (and other radio
broadcasting stations also) would be soon be demolished to make way for a new
high rise building. Instead, the
building lay abandoned for several years, and it became a haunt for the
homeless, though some of the studio and office areas of the previous 3AW have
been spared graffiti and vandalism.
On an earlier occasion, 3AW moved
its transmitter from one location to another, and the tower at the old location
remained standing for some years. It too
stood abandoned, until it was demolished more recently.
The
small settlement at Cook, on the Trans Australia railway line running 2500
miles from Sydney to Perth, is located in South Australia rather close to the
border with Western Australia. Over this
area, the railway line runs absolutely straight for just on 300 miles.
There was a time when the railway
siding at Cook was quite a large town with a population of some 200 residents, with
its own hospital, a school, an airstrip, a swimming pool and a grassless golf
course. These days though the resident
population is less than half a dozen.
Back then during the time of its
prosperity, the town of Cook had its own radio broadcasting station under the
callsign 5CAS. The callsign 5CAS would
be correct for South Australia, and it looks like a regular three letter
callsign for an FM station.
However, nothing more is known about
this station, and it is not shown in any official lists of radio stations in
Australia. The callsign 5CAS is shown in
a photo of a glass door in a building at Cook, obviously leading into what was
once their local radio station. We would
suggest that 5CAS was a local, probably unlicensed community FM radio station;
the 5 suggests South Australia, and the three letters CAS could stand for Cook
Amateur Station.
Bermuda is a group of low forming
volcanoes some 700 miles off the continental coast of North America. They are a British possession with a total of
181 islands, 8 of which are inhabited.
In 1955, the US navy opened a radio
receiving station at the beachside on Tudor Hill, Bermuda. This top secret station was established for
the purpose of listening to Russian submarines on their way to the Americas and
Cuba during the Cold War.
This American facility was abandoned
in 1995, the roof has collapsed, and trees and shrubs are now growing
inside. However, the building itself
seems to be quite sturdy, and it seems that it could easily be converted into a
beachside tourist resort.
At
Clear Creek near Toronto in Canada is an old abandoned radio station that
supported air flights inbound and out during World War 2. A lot of the vandalized electrical and
electronic equipment is still in place.
Also a NATO communication station
lies abandoned near Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. This very solid building, constructed in
steel and concrete, is totally intact, though vandalized. Electrical connections are still evident, as
is also a small corner reflector antenna on top of the building that was used
for microwave reception. This station,
in the middle of a wide green cultivated field, was abandoned in 1985.
Inside a major tourist shopping
plaza in Dubai, a very modern radio station, together with its offices and
studios, sits open to the public view, but it is simply not in use, just
abandoned. It seems that this planned
radio station fell victim to a downturn in the local economy.
Over in England, there are two major
historic shortwave stations parts of which simply lie abandoned. These long term magnificent stations were
located at Borough Hill near Daventry, and at Rugby in the central midlands.
The first test broadcasts from the
two new 10 kW STC transmitters at the BBC Daventry shortwave station began on
October 25, 1932 under the callsign G5SW, even though the actual G5SW
transmitter was not located at Daventry; it was still on the air from the
Marconi facility at Chelmsford, some 80 miles distant.
The final broadcast from the BBC
Daventry was heard on 15070 kHz via Sender 204 and it closed at 1130 UTC on Sunday March 29,
1992. Thus ended 60 years of illustrious
international shortwave broadcasting from one of the world’s most famous shortwave
stations.
Some of the BBC buildings at Borough
Hill were taken over for other radio related and non radio related activities
and events, and all of the radio towers were ultimately demolished. Much of the area where the antenna towers
stood is now a pleasant park where locals like to run their dogs, yet there are
still some reminders of this once mighty shortwave station. Half a dozen of the concrete blocks that
supported the antenna towers for the 5XX longwave and mediumwave transmitter
are still in place, abandoned as they were when the towers themselves were
felled.
Not faring so well was the huge
radio station operated by the GPO, General Post Office, near Rugby in
Warwickshire in England. This station
was opened on January 1, 1926 with just one transmitter, though verily a
massive unit at 350 kW, and it operated on longwave as the key station in the
Imperial Wireless Chain under the callsign GBR.
At one stage, with all of its 57 shortwave and longwave transmitters,
Rugby Radio was acknowledged as the world’s
largest radio communication station.
Rugby Radio was finally closed in
April 2000 after nearly ¾ century
of illustrious service. The facility was
simply abandoned and junked. However we
should add, to their credit, that the entire estate is currently under
development as a large housing addition.
Another huge communication station
was located at Kahuku on the northern tip of the island of Oahu in Hawaii. RCA Kahuku began its life as a Marconi
wireless station with just one transmitter, a 230 kW rotary spark unit under
the callsign KIE. The Marconi wireless
station at Kahuku was officially opened on September 24, 1914 way before Hawaii
became a U.S. state in 1951. There were
just on 200 official visitors in attendacne, most of whom travelled by narrow
gauge sugarcane train and then walked the final distance.
Sixty four years later in 1978, this
same Kahuku communication station was closed due to the availability of
international communication by satellite, and all of its unnumbered shortwave
transmitters were silenced. These days,
RCA Kahuku is just totally abandoned, even though some of its strongly built
and partly roofless buildings are listed as historic Heritage Sites.
Back in the days of its prosperity,
the RCA shortwave station at Kahuku was noted throughout the world for the
relay of the very special program Hawaii Calls.
This program was produced live, usually in the courtyard of the Moana
Hotel at Waikiki Beach, Honolulu.
The first broadcast of Hawaii Calls transpired
on July 3, 1935, and the weekly series ended forty years later in 1975. For many years, RCA Kahuku relayed the
program on shortwave for rebroadcast on the mediumwave networks in the
continental United States. At the height
of its popularity, Hawaii Calls was heard via 750 radio stations throughout the
world