Jeff:Radio station WRMI in Okeechobee, Florida, where this program is produced each week, is now the largest shortwave station in the Western Hemisphere, having grown tremendously from its humble beginnings, 30 years ago. Our anniversary was actually two days ago, because it was on June 14th, 1994 that we first began broadcasting with a regular program schedule. Ray Robinson in Los Angeles looks back now over some of the events of the past 30 years.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Radio Miami International has always been a very progressive commercial shortwave station, owned and operated by our very own Jeff White. Jeff – we congratulate you on an amazing 30 years.
As well as operating WRMI, Jeff is also the long-time secretary-treasurer of NASB – the National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters – and has served as the Chairman of HFCC – the High Frequency Coordination Conference – since 2015.
As we mentioned in our feature three weeks back about Radio Earth, Jeff first became involved with shortwave broadcasting in 1983. He and his colleagues had a vision for creating a commercial shortwave station in the Caribbean, but began by producing programming in Curaçao that was aired over Radio Clarín in the Dominican Republic.
Over the following eleven years, he produced programming for Radio Earth and Radio Discovery, that was carried via WRNO in New Orleans, WHRI in Indianapolis, KCBI in Dallas, Radio Clarín in the Dominican Republic and Radio Milano International in Milan, Italy.
In the fall of 1984, Adventist World Radio, AWR-Asia in Poona, India, came into the picture. Occasional items from Radio Earth were included in the old AWR DX program, "Radio Monitors International," and that DX program in its entirety was carried regularly in the shortwave schedule of Radio Earth.
As we also reported three weeks ago, Jeff left Radio Earth in 1985 to focus on other shortwave projects. Eventually through contacts with Cuban exile organizations and the Cuban American National Foundation in particular, he and a Cuban broadcast engineer by the name of Kiko Espinosa jointly applied to the FCC for a shortwave broadcast license, which was approved, with the call letters WRMI, standing for Radio Miami International.
They acquired a 50 kW Wilkinson transmitter, model AM50,000B, from the Dominican Republic, as well as a 5 kW modified ex-military unit as an auxiliary transmitter. A corner reflector antenna beaming 160 degrees toward the Caribbean and Latin America was installed, supplemented later by a yagi-style log periodic antenna beaming 317 degrees northwest over the USA towards Vancouver, Canada.
The first open-carrier test broadcasts from the auxiliary transmitter were made on November 11, 1993. Test broadcasts from the 50 kW unit commenced soon afterwards. When all the necessary technical adjustments had been completed, including the suppression of an unwanted harmonic, the station implemented a regular broadcast schedule on June14, 1994, 30 years ago last Friday.
The two antennas were used at different times of the day, meaning that certain hours were beamed to North America and other hours to the Caribbean and Latin America. During its first twenty years, WRMI was heard with regular programming 24x7 on three different frequencies:
• 9955 kHz from 0900-1200 UTC daily;
• 15725 kHz from 1200-2300 UTC daily, with variations on weekends, and
• 7385 kHz from 2300-0900 UTC daily, again with variations on weekends.
Eventually WRMI used 9955 kHz 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
A lengthy series of digital-analog broadcasts on behalf of the National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters, NASB, were conducted in late 1994, on Saturday nights in North America at 0230 UTC on 7385 kHz.
For a couple of years in the early days, much of the programming from WRMI was also heard on a delayed relay from station HRJA, Radio Copan International, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A 1 kW transmitter there was operated by Radio Estereo Amistad, and it was intended to grow into a major relay service for coverage into North America. However, the transmitter was removed from service for modification on October 31, 1995, and never returned to the shortwave bands.
Whilst WRMI did produce some of its own programs such as ‘Viva Miami’, most of the airtime was sold to outside groups including political, religious, commercial and cultural organizations. During those early years, programming was noted from:
• Radio Prague International from the Czech Republic,
• Vatican Radio in Europe, and
• Radio 16 Desanm (Says Day-sam, or 16 December) in Haiti, a station whose name in Creole commemorated the date in 1990 of the first free and fair democratic election in Haiti after the fall of the 29 year long dictatorship by the Duvalier family.
In addition, WRMI also relayed a downlink from the satellite service of the World Radio Network in England, which itself carried many stations throughout the world including:
• Radio Japan in Tokyo,
• Kol Israel in Jerusalem, and
• Radio Australia in Melbourne.
Sadly, Kiko Espinosa, the co-licensee of WRMI, passed away in 2005.
But then in 2013, an amazing opportunity opened up. WYFR, Family Radio, signed off for the last time from their site in Okeechobee, Florida on June 30th 2013. Radio Miami International stepped in to buy the site, which was the largest privately-owned shortwave transmission facility in the western hemisphere, with 14 transmitters and 23 antennas beamed in 11 different directions around the globe. One transmitter was decommissioned in the August, but of the remaining 13 units, two are 100 kW Continental 418-D’s, eight more are 100 kW units custom fabricated onsite to the same design as the Continental 418-D’s, two are Gates 100 kW units, and one is a Gates 50 kW unit. Of the 23 antennas, 12 are log periodics, 10 are rhombics, and 1 is a curtain, which have differing take-off angles and frequency sweet spots.
The sale went ahead, and WRMI prepared to transfer all broadcast operations from Miami to Okeechobee. The last broadcast ended at midnight local time from Hialeah (Miami) on November 30th, 2013, and the first from Okeechobee began at the exact same time, which was actually December 1st. The call letters were also transferred to the Okeechobee transmitter site on December 1st, although an office and studio was still maintained in Hialeah. WRMI now has a studio and administrative offices in Okeechobee in the 16,000-square-foot transmitter building about 20 miles north of Lake Okeechobee. The antennas and transmitters are located on a 660-acre site (about one square mile of land) which is also used as a cattle ranch.
Most programming is in English or Spanish, but some programs are in Creole, Portuguese and other languages. Programming is organized into eleven different channels, or ‘systems’, labeled A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K, and L. These eleven channels ‘mix and match’ the transmitters and antennas they use throughout the broadcast day to ensure optimal signals are sent to the desired target areas. Only channel B which mostly uses 9955 kHz is also streamed on the Internet; all other channels are broadcast on shortwave only. Full details of the transmission schedule and a ‘Listen Live’ button are available on WRMI’s website, www.wrmi.net.
The transmitter and antenna facilities at WRMI remain mostly the same as when Radio Miami International took over the site in 2013, although a handful of hurricanes over the years have done some damage in the antenna field.
We here at Adventist World Radio salute Radio Miami International – WRMI – on the occasion of their 30th anniversary; and we also express gratitude for the fact that WRMI has now carried 1,320 AWR programs for DXers and SWL’s:
• 521 editions of the original ‘Wavescan’ (which ran from 1995-2004), and now
• 799 editions of ‘New Wavescan’, or NWS, this program, (which started in 2006)
~ all as a service to the DX/SWL community.
Radio Miami International has always been a very reliable verifier, and many listeners in the Americas, Europe, and the South Pacific own prized QSL-cards from this station. The AWR Heritage QSL collection, currently on its way to Canberra, Australia, contains more than 50 QSL cards and letters from the shortwave services of Radio Earth, Radio Discovery, WRMI, and the various program services that have chosen WRMI as their broadcast platform.
So, congratulations from me too, Jeff – have a piece of cake on me!
(Ray Robinson/AWR Wavescan).
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