New Chronohertz Station in India

A news item in the April issue of the Australian DX News informs us that India is planning to construct a new chronohertz station with two towers that will stand three times higher than the Qutab Minar in Delhi.  The height of the Qutab Minar is listed at 240 feet, which would mean that the new radio towers would stand at around 720 feet, the tallest self standing towers in India.

The Qutab Minar is a famous ancient landmark in New Delhi nearly two thousand years old.  It is constructed from ornately carved red sandstone and marble, with an internal staircase of 379 steps.  The design of the Qutab Minar in India is described as basically Persian in style, though it was patterned after the Minaret of Jam in a remote area of western Afghanistan.

The location for this new longwave radio station in India has not yet been chosen, though it will be a function of NPL, the National Physical Laboratory.  Interestingly, NPL did operate a chronohertz shortwave station many years ago, and its standard time and frequency signals were heard on three shortwave channels, 5 10 and 15 MHz.

In our program today, we go back and take a historic look at the earlier station ATA, the old chronohertz station in India; and just as a matter of interest, we begin with the measurement of time, as it was in the ancient eras of antiquity.

It was way back more than four thousand years ago that people in the old middle eastern world were measuring time with what we would call today, shadow clocks.  That is, as the shadow from a fixed object moved as the sun appeared to move, then an approximate calculation of local time could be gauged.

According to current historians, the first known specific reference to a sun dial, that is, in the old concept of how they were made, is found in the Bible.  It is stated that King Hezekiah was familiar with the progress of the day with a sun dial that his father KIng Ahaz had constructed, and that was way back around 700 BC. 

This sun dial was a function of the palace structure in his capital city, Jerusalem, and it was probably a building somewhat similar to that which was built in India three hundred years ago, not a small brass plate with a projecting gnomon like we use today.

A QSL card issued by All India Radio in New Delhi back in the 1980s shows a picture of a
similar structure known as Jantar Mantar).  This structure, located on Parliament Street quite close to the long time headquarters of All India Radio, was constructed by Maharajah Sawai Jai Singh of Jaipur in the year 1724, though some historians had mistakenly given an incorrect date a few years earlier. 

A cluster of buildings at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, large and small, was designed in such a way that the time of day, right down to a second, could be accurately measured from the shadow of the sun as it moved across one of the buildings.  All of the fourteen geometric structures at this location were designed to accurately predict the movement of planets and stars, as well as to predict eclipses of the sun and moon.

However, as time went by, other methods of measuring time more accurately were needed.  It was back in the year 1368 that the first public clock was made in England, and it was more than a
century later that the first domestic clock was made in Germany.  The first watch was made in the year 1510.

In our more recent electronic era, more accurate methods of time keeping are required, and it was in 1937 that the American chronohertz station, WWV in Washington DC, began to broadcast time signals.  It was in 1955 that the atomic clock was invented in England.

Now, back to the story of the Indian radio station ATA.  Just one year after the infinitely accurate atomic clock was developed in England, plans were formulated to establish a chronohertz station for India, based on a concept similar to the American station WWV. 

Three years later, the new ATA was inaugurated at the National Physical Laboratory on Hillside Road, Kalkaji, New Delhi on February 4, 1959.  A Westinghouse transmitter began a temporary experimental service with 2 kW on exactly 10 MHz, using a horizontal dipole antenna at the height of one wavelength.

However as time would tell, another sixteen years passed by before another transmitter was installed.  This was a 5 kW unit that was rated at 10 kW PEP, and this took over the broadcast service on 10 MHz on August 1, 1975.  This new shortwave transmitter that replaced the original 2 kW
Westinghouse unit, was made by Marconi in England.

The third transmitter at station ATA, another 5/10 kW unit, also built by Marconi in England, was inaugurated almost a year later.  The schedule for this transmitter was night time on 5 MHz and day time on 15 MHz.

Way back then, there was a nice co-operation between the old DX program from Adventist World Radio in Asia, Radio Monitors International, and the chronohertz station ATA.  Each year in the RMI DX program, an ATA Day was conducted to commemorate the service rendered to the radio world by ATA.  In addition, a QSL card was designed for ATA in the AWR office in Poona, and changes and
developments at ATA were announced over the air in the AWR DX program.

However, as Jose Jacob, VU2JOS at the National Institute of Amateur Radio in Hyderabad tells us, station ATA left the air some time around the year 2000, due to ailing equipment.  The time signal and frequency service was transferred from radio to satellite and also to the telephone system.

During its more than 40 years of on air service, station ATA utilized just three shortwave
transmitters, not four, as previously thought.  The original 2 kW Westinghouse unit was on the air from 1959 to 1975; and the two subsequent Marconi units were inaugurated in 1975 & 1976.  These
shortwave transmitters were all withdrawn from service in the year 2000.

Initially, QSL letters and prepared QSL cards were issued during the first era of on air activity from station ATA.  Subsequently, just one batch of QSL cards was printed for ATA usage, and these were in black print on yellow card. 

And now, it seems that chronohertz station ATA may be back on the air again one day, perhaps under a different callsign, and this time not on shortwave but rather on longwave from two tall towers.

Interestingly, the callsign ATA has at times been in use also from other radio stations in India.  For example, the callsign ATA was in use on shortwave by the meteorological station in Delhi with weather information.  Then too, the amateur callsign prefix in use for the Indian Antarctic Expedition some years ago was also ATA.
(AwR-wavwscan/NWS 482)

Another BBC Shortwave Station is Closed

BBC - Nakhon Sawan, Thailand tower

The latest edition of the Australian DX News alerted us to the fact that the BBC has closed its East Asia Relay Station at Nakhon Sawan in northern Thailand.  Additional news reports about the closure of this important BBC shortwave relay station have subsequently circulated widely on the internet.

            According to a news release issued by the BBC in London, the last day of operation for their relay station in Thailand was December 31 last year, at the end of their lease which was not renewed.  The BBC states that they have not been able to come to an agreement with the Thai government over programming issues, but in any case the BBC has now closed the station due to financial difficulties.                   Even this station has been completely silent right throughout this year thus far, the closure of this important BBC shortwave station seems to have largely escaped the attention of the international radio world.  In our program today, we plan to present the story of this BBC Far East Relay Station during its nearly ten year operation from Hong Kong, and in a coming program, we plan to present the story of their subsequent station in Thailand.  

            Planning for the Hong Kong relay station began during the 1970s.  However in 1981, the Managing Director of BBC External Broadcasting, Douglas Muggeridge, expressed frustration that the entire project may be abandoned due to unavailability of funding. 

            Nevertheless, even though it was known in advance that the station could expect a life span of no more than ten years, the managing authorities finally decided to go ahead with the project in Hong Kong while planning also for the construction of a subsequent station in another at the time undetermined country.

            The location for the new BBC East Asia Relay Station was in an area of undeveloped jungle in the New Territories at Tsang Tsui, some 75 miles north west of downtown Hong Kong.  It was an isolated location with no nearby public transportation. 

            A very compact site was chosen for the construction of the transmitter building and the erection of five self supporting antenna towers.  The towers were arranged in an east-west row and they supported four multi-band curtain antennas with passive reflectors. 

            Each antenna could be slewed electronically at plus or minus 14^o for coverage into northern China and Japan.  A row of hills obstructed propagation to the south, but in any case the station was needed for programming only to the north.

            Construction work at the Hong Kong transmitter site began in February 1985 at a total cost of $11 million.  Two Marconi transmitters at 250 kW, Model B131, were installed and the first test transmission began more than two years later at 0400 UTC on August 6, 1987 on 15280 kHz.  Full time operation began six weeks later on September 27.

            Programming delivery from London was by satellite to Hong Kong Telecom and then by fibre optic cable to the station.  Programming was broadcast in three major language streams, Chinese, Japanese and English, with two programs on the air simultaneously at any one time.

            The station was an efficient computer controlled unattended operation with only twelve employees, just one of whom was a foreigner, a BBC manager from England.  As a touch of humor, it was stated that the local protective dog was also a BBC employee, due to the fact that the manager fed it from BBC funding.

            On the political scene, it was agreed that the one time British colony of Hong Kong would revert to China in June 1997.  Consequently, the BBC planned to remove and ship out all usable equipment and demolish the building in advance of the transfer of the territory to Chinese sovereignty. 

            The final broadcast from the BBC East Asia Relay Station in Hong Kong occurred at the end of November 1996.  The actual location of this shortwave station seems to be a green area among the jungle trees, visible on Google Maps at 113 55 18 57 E & 22 25 04 02 N.

            Many QSL cards were issued from the BBC East Asia Relay Station, quite often local Hong Kong postcards with a rubber stamp on the text side containing the QSL details.  At one stage, a printed QSL card showed a photo of the antenna system at Tsang Tsui.

            Two months after the station was closed, the towers were down and the two transmitters were already crated, ready for shipment to another destination, which turned out to be a new BBC station in Thailand.  And that station is now also off the air.  The story of this station is planned as our topic here in Wavescan, quite soon.

(AWR Wavescan/NWS 247)