DX NOTES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 715, 27 March 1953, Page 16

DX NOTES

Time's notes are supplied by the New Zealand Radio DX League and are designed record items of interest from overseas > on both the broadcast and shortwave bands. Inquiries sent to The Listener regarding the identification of stations will be forwarded to the League for attention. Particulars of the type of programmes, approximate frequency, date and time heard, are necessary.

STATION 4VEH, Cap Haitien, Haiti, will broadcast a special transmission for overseas listeners on Easter Sunday, April 5, at 4.45 p.m. New Zealand time on 9685 kilocycles (31 metre band). The programme will consist of transcribed Easter organ music, made by Ken Boord, of Morgantown, West Virginia. Ken Boord is well-known as the short-wave editor of Radio and Television News, of Chicago. Reports of listeners to the programme will be welcomed and will be confirmed with a new verification -card. The Voice of America, with its globeNecircling facilities, now’ broadcasts to nearly 100 countries, with a potential audience of tens of: millions. Transmitters in the United States will be supplemented soon by two more, now being built. One is at East Arcadia, North Carolina, and the other at Dungeness, Washington. These promise to be the most powerful radio stations in the world. Most of the Voice’s 46 language services originate in its New York studios. They are funnelled through the master control panel over land lines to one or more of the 42 shortwave transmitters in various parts of the United States. Apart from direct broadcasts, the Voice also reaches a vast audience through relay stations. Relay facilities operated by the BBC at

Wooferton, England, pick up the signals from America and direct them to other relay centres, such as the one at Munich, Germany, where 10 transmitters broadcast to east and south-east Europe and part of Africa. Bases at Tangier, North Africa, and Salonika, Greece, carry the programmes to east Europe, particularly the Balkans, and to south-west Russia and the Middle East. Broadcasts to east, south-east and south Asia are relayed by stations at Honolulu, Manila and Colombo, in Ceylon. A typical relay base is the one at Tangier, which has eight shortwave transmitters and directional antennae. It is divided into two main sections, one to receive signals and the other to transmit them. They are in rolling country close to the Atlantic and well outside the city limits. They make their own electricity, for they use almost as much as the whole city of Tangier. The engineers have the best of equipment. With the touch of one button they can beam a programme over the entire eastern half of Europe and to western Europe and several parts of Africa as well. The average listener might well

wonder why such an elaborate system is needed to carry the programmes around the world. Why doesn’t America, if it wants to reach Russia, for instance, just beam its voice over the top of the world? But around the North Pole is a constantly-changing area of electromagnetic turbulence which present-day radio signals cannot pierce. So the Voice’s engineers had to take a roundabout approach. With relay stations, they bent the radio waves around the auroral zone, When the two new superpowered stations take the air, the Voice of America’s programmes will reach an even greater audience and may perhaps even break through the ,auroral zone.

Around the World Fiji: A new shortwave transmitter in Suva has been heard testing on several frequencies in the 49 metre band, using 5995,, 6005 and 6130 kilocycles, and is now in the 41 metre band on 7195 kes. It relays broadcast band station ZJV (930 kes.) "The Voice of the Fiji Islands," which has commercial programmes. Reports. on these experimental transmissions are requested to the Postmaster-General, Suva.

Indonesia: Radio Indonesia, Djakarta, uses" a new 50,000-watt station in a transmission beamed to New Zealand at 11.0 p.m. on 9710 kes. (31 metre band). This frequency is also used 4n a transmission to Europe and New Zealand from 7.0 to 8.0 a.m. Japan; Radio Japan’s service to" New Zealand has not yet started, but broadcasts are well received at 11.0 p.m., though they are beamed to China, over JOB2 on 7180 kes. (41 metre band). English news is presented at this time, Music and a commentary are heard till 11.30 and then the transmission is in. Japanese. .