100 Yeras of Radio Broadcasting in Indonesia, Part 2

 Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for this week's edition of Wavescan.  

100 Years of Radio Broadcasting in Indonesia

Part 1 https://mt-shortwave.blogspot.com/2025/08/100-years-of-radio-broadcasting-in.html

Jeff: In our feature this week, we conclude our two-part visit to Indonesia, which this month is celebrating the centenary of radio broadcasting in their country.  Here once again is Ray Robinson at the Voice of Hope studios in Los Angeles.

Ray: Thanks, Jeff.  RRI, Radio Republik Indonesia, was founded on September 11, 1945, with headquarters in central Jakarta.  Following the Japanese occupation during World War II, Indonesia initially came under Australian administration from 1945-1946, and the AAAS, or Australian Army Amenities Service, ran a 21-station network of low power shortwave transmitters until the Dutch colonial authorities were ready to retake control of the country and its radio facilities.  After a three year period of conflict, the Dutch then finally granted independence to Indonesia in 1949.

Throughout the 1950’s and 60’s, a plethora of low power tropical band shortwave transmitters were used by RRI for local coverage.  But in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, plans were implemented to replace most of those tropical band transmitters with medium wave ones.  Interestingly, it wasn’t until the 1973 edition of the WRTH that any medium wave stations were listed, but Wavescan’s editor-in-chief, Dr. Adrian Peterson, did hear some operating during visits he made to the country as early as 1968.

Well, as part of RRI’s plans, in 1967 they decided to provide nationwide coverage for domestic programming, especially to rural areas and remote islands, using high power shortwave.  For this, they constructed a new shortwave transmission site at Cimanggis, about a dozen miles south of downtown Jakarta.  The first transmitter installed there was a 100 kW Telefunken unit, Model SST338, made in Germany.  Callsigns in Indonesia before World War II were in the Dutch ‘P’ series, and afterwards in the independent Indonesian ‘Y’ series.  Accordingly, this new transmitter was assigned the call YDF.

Unfortunately, the story of shortwave broadcasting from Cimanggis is the saga of an almost constant supply of new transmitters which replaced earlier ailing ones; brought about by the harsh tropical climate with its high temperatures and monsoonal rains, and worsened by financial shortages and poorly trained staff.

There were times also when the delivery of electricity from the national grid

was insufficient to energize the high-powered transmitters.

Classic QSL card from VOI Indonesia

In his monumental compilation of shortwave transmitter histories, “Transmitter Documentation Project 1998”, Ludo Maes in Belgium presented this following litany of shortwave transmitters that were installed over the years at RRI Cimanggis:- 

         

1967 1 Telefunken Germany 100 kW SST338

1970 4 Philips Holland 50 & 120 8FZ514 & 8FZ515

1974 2 Funkwerk Germany 100

1982 3 Harris USA 100 SW100

1983 1 Thomson France 250 TRE2320

On May 21, 1984, the completed installation at Cimanggis with four new transmitters (the 3 Harris 100’s and the Thomson 250) was taken into service,

and the then President Suharto presided at an official commissioning ceremony.

This cluster of four transmitters was intended to provide RRI Home Service programming on a nationwide basis as a national unifying factor.

The three 100 kW transmitters relayed the RRI programming to the westward islands, and the 250 kW transmitter beamed the same programming eastward.

Then in 1992, RRI announced plans for a new overseas service called the Voice of Indonesia, to provide information about Indonesia to people around the world.  For this new Voice of Indonesia, RRI ordered another seven 250 kW Marconi B6131 shortwave transmitters from England, together with 20 curtain antennas for installation at both Cimanggis and at another site on Sulawesi Island.  All this new equipment was progressively installed over the next three years, and then the new double facility was officially inaugurated on September 14, 1996.

In September 2005, international radio monitors in Australia were surprised to hear

Radio Australia programming being relayed over RRI shortwave in Indonesia.

This program relay in the Bahasa (ba-HAH-sa) Indonesian language was educational in nature and it was presented under the title Kang Guru (Kangaroo).

These days, the WRTH lists the Voice of Indonesia with just one broadcast in English, daily except Saturdays to North America at 0800 UTC on 7780 kHz with 40 kW from a site at Palangkaraya in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.  Other languages are heard daily to South East Asia on 3325 kHz from that same site, and also on 4755 kHz from Cimanggis, south of Jakarta.

RRI has several radio channels with broadcasts for Indonesia and abroad, serving all Indonesian citizens throughout the nation and overseas.  Extensive use of medium wave transmitters is still made for the domestic audience, along with a network of FM transmitters that carry RRI’s four domestic program services.  There are also hundreds of privately-owned FM stations, and a growing use of digital radio, especially in Jakarta, on DAB+.

Over the years, many international radio monitors around the globe have been successful in logging RRI, and their reception reports have netted an invaluable QSL card.  During the past 80 years since RRI was founded in 1945, they have issued a variety of QSL cards, usually in color; some as artistic renderings of Indonesian symbols, and some showing photos of various Indonesian cities.

Back to you, Jeff.

(Ray Robinson/Wavescan)

 For an audio clip of Voice of Indonesia English service, go to: https://youtu.be/8exhkZ0w00U

Voice of Indonesia French service:  https://youtu.be/c6vLEauTs9o

100 Years of Radio Broadcasting in Indonesia, Part 1

 A special thank you to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing this week's edition of Wavescan.

A classic QSL from Indonesia

Jeff: Today, we begin a two-part look at the story of radio broadcasting in the Southeast Asian country of Indonesia.  Over the last few years, a number of countries have celebrated the centenary of radio broadcasting within their borders.  Today, it’s the turn of Indonesia, where there have now been 100 years of broadcast radio, both domestically and for international audiences.  And actually, the beginning of wireless communication in Indonesia goes way back even further than that, to about 110 years.  Ray Robinson in Los Angeles has the story.

Ray: Thanks, Jeff.  Indonesia is an archipelago of over 17,000 islands, spread over an area almost as large as the United States.  The five main islands are Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra, most of Borneo, and the western half of the island of New Guinea.  It’s a predominantly Muslim country, although some islands, such as Bali, are majority Hindu.  The total population is now over 282 million, which makes it the fourth most populous in the world after only India, China and the United States of America.  Approximately half of the population lives on the island of Java, which is the most densely populated island in the world.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the area had been administered by the Dutch East India Company, but when that was dissolved due to bankruptcy in 1799, the Dutch East Indies was established as a nationalized colony of the Netherlands.

A classic QSL from RRI Palemberg

In the era just before the beginning of World War I, two spark wireless stations were established in the Dutch East Indies for navy communication.  This was in the days before internationally recognized callsigns were in general use, and one of these stations, located at Sabang, was on the air in Morse Code under the irregular callsign SAB.

Immediately after the end of the war, there were four such stations in the Dutch East Indies, and these were all designated with callsigns in the new PK series as:

        PKA     Sabang

        PKB     Weltevreden

        PKC     Sitoebondo

        PKD     Koepang

        

Soon afterwards, the Dutch government in the capital, Batavia, now known as Jakarta, announced that a monster-sized wireless station, using Telefunken arc equipment, was under installation at Malabar, near Bandoeng.  The date for the official opening of this station was set for May 5, 1923.  However, a tropical lightning strike destroyed some of the wireless equipment and the auspicious day was postponed until repairs were completed.

This massive 3.5 megawatt wireless station was established for reliable communication with the Dutch Foreign Ministry in Holland.  However, in the mid-1920’s, spark wireless transmitters were rapidly becoming obsolete, and so it was only a few years before this transmitter was replaced with one of a newer valve, or tube, design.

The first radio broadcasting station in Indonesia was installed in the capital, Batavia, exactly 100 years ago in mid-1925 under the callsign BRX.   Other broadcasting stations began to sprout throughout the Dutch East Indies and many of these were amalgamated into the newly-formed government NIROM network in 1934.

Shortwave broadcasting in the Dutch East Indies began in 1928 as a dual effort on the part of smaller local radio stations and the large communication stations.  In Batavia, the first on shortwave was station JFC.  The main communication station at Bandoeng, about 100 miles southeast of Batavia/Jakarta in the center of West Java, began to relay broadcast programming on shortwave for the benefit of listeners throughout Indonesia, as well as in Australia, other countries in Asia, and also back in Holland itself.

Over the years, a large number of stations appeared on the shortwave dial, mostly in the tropical shortwave bands.  These stations were on the air with callsigns in the P series and also the more recent YD series.

Three transmitters of Radio Batavia were installed at Bandoeng, rated at 2, 40 and 80 kW, with antennas beamed to Europe, North America and other parts of Asia and the Pacific.  Weekly music broadcasts were conducted on 15.93 metres (18820 kHz).  The three transmitters, using the callsigns PLE, PLW and PMB, took part in a round-the-world relay in June 1930, and again two years later.  These transmitters were frequently also used as intermediate stations for the relay of broadcasts from London and Holland to Australia and New Zealand.

In the pre-war era, the big shortwave stations in the Dutch East Indies, and several of the smaller stations also, were recognized as good verifiers.  The QSL cards from the communication stations were usually in the form of typed postcards in English, though the most famous card of that era was the NIROM certificate which listed complete details, including callsign.

Then, on Saturday March 7, 1942, at the end of its broadcast day on 15150 kHz, the announcer on Radio Batavia, Bandoeng was heard in Australia to sign-off with this announcement:  "This is Radio Bandoeng closing down.  God save the Queen.  Goodbye everyone until better times come."  And with that, the station left the air.

RRI Surabaya

Eleven days later, on March 18, 1942, the Dutch officially surrendered to the Japanese, and the Japanese began to take over the radio networks throughout the former Dutch East Indies.  The large colonial radio station in Bandoeng was by far the largest radio station operated by the Japanese authorities during the Pacific-Asia War, even larger than their home base at Nazaki in Japan with its three 50 kW transmitters.

A month after the Japanese had occupied the city, the shortwave service was revived, with communications beamed to Japan and Germany and with programming beamed towards Australia, New Zealand and India.  Using very high power, as it was in those days, of 40 and 80 kW, programming beamed towards Australia and New Zealand was heard under new callsigns, such as JBC and ABC.  The signals were always reported as "strong" in Australia and New Zealand.

The callsign JBC indicated Japanese Broadcasting Company, and ABC was a callsign for clandestine programming that mimicked Radio Australia.  Japanese station personnel in Bandoeng recorded off air the tuning signal, station announcements and other significant items from Radio Australia and then wove those segments into their own programming, with the intent of capturing unsuspecting listeners in Australia.

At around this time, an Australian government listening post near Melbourne took directional bearings from these transmissions and verified they were indeed coming from the 80 kW shortwave transmitter located at Bandoeng.

Several different callsigns were in use during this era. There was ABC and JBC as we have just mentioned, and then some broadcasts were identified simply as Radio Batavia, and at one stage they apparently used an earlier callsign, PMC.  The broadcasts on the air as "Radio Batavia" always signed off with the "Liberty Bell March" by John Philip Sousa, better known these days as the Monty Python theme tune.

In early 1943, the name of the city of Batavia was changed to Jakarta, with several variations in spelling.  Radio magazines ceased listing broadcasts from these stations soon afterwards, not because they had left the air, but because of wartime reporting restrictions in Australia and New Zealand.  It is known that the final Japanese broadcast from the radio station at Bandoeng was on July 26, 1945.

Indonesia 1942 via Wikipedia

During the occupation, the Japanese had encouraged Indonesia’s independence movement, and only two days after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, a Proclamation of Independence was issued by Sukarno, who was to become the country’s first president.  But there were still strong Dutch interests in the country including ownership of many plantations as well as it being rich in oil and other natural resources.  Immediately after the war the country was administered by Australia (since it had been the Australian Army which had liberated it from the Japanese), but in 1946 they transferred the administration back to The Netherlands, which wanted to re-establish colonial rule.  This led to a three-year guerilla conflict which only ended in 1949 when the Dutch, under international pressure, finally recognized Indonesian independence.

 

The first edition of the World Radio Handbook in 1947 lists all of the shortwave stations on the air in what has since become Indonesia under two series of callsigns, some in the new Y series and some in the old P series.  Not listed anywhere are the high-powered shortwave transmitters that were on the air during the occupation years.  It would appear that these units did not survive the war.

And we’ll continue the post-War story next week.  Back to you, Jeff.

Ray Robinson-Wavescan/10 Aug 2025)