DX NOTES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 889, 17 August 1956, Page 23

DX NOTES

HESE notes bring news about stations in other countries, programmes information, and details of special broadcasts for New Zealand listeners. They are supplied by the New Zealand Radio DX League, 212 Earn Street, Invercargill, from which further. information can be obtained. YDNEY viewers will have now seen regular tests of television, test patterns having been transmitted since midJuly. The first station is scheduled to open in Sydney on September 16, two licences being granted for that city: to Consolidated Press and the Macquarie Broadcasting Service. The MBS, which has as its key station 2GB, has some 56 stations affiliated to its programmes, and is Australia’s largest network. For the first time in Test cricket history, Australian Commercial stations have challenged the ABC for its ball-for-ball listening audience during the current series. The ABC, as usual, relays the BBC commentary, but the Federation of Commercial Broadcasters also has a team of three commentators, Freddie Brown, Arthur Gilligan and Alan McGilvray, and the relay is received by radio telephone, and is available to the 106 affiliated stations. Shortwave United Kingdom: When the BBC’s popular programme Scottish Magazine

visited Skye, they promised to send all who wrote reporting the reception of the programme, a picture postcard of the Isle of Skye. Such an action by the Scots could hardly go unnoticed, and the re- ‘ sulting hundreds of letters from every continent proved that. In a letter, Bill Meikle, producer of Scottish Magazine, reports that reaction from New Zealand is very infrequent. Scottish resistence to writing

about the programme, and if it is liked, seems to be the trouble. The programme is broadcast on Sundays at 10.15 a.m. on 12040 kc. (25 metres), 15300 ke. (19 metres) and 17870 ke. (16 metres). Africa: New stations in this area are a rare entry in a shortwave listener’s, log, so that the reception of two new countries, which have just begun shortwave broadcasting, is something of an event. The new countries are French Somaliland and Sierra Leone. Djibouti in Somali uses 4975 kc. and closes at 7.15 am. after a programme generally recorded in Paris. Freetown in Sierra Leone, using 3316 ke., has been heard at 8.0 am. with only weak signals,

better reception being enjoyed from the Johannesburg transmitters on 3290 and 3380 ke., while the Forces station at Benghazi has a BBC news relay on 3305 ke. at 6.0 and 8.0 a.m. New Caledonia: Radio Noumea in New Caledonia, which is consistently heard on 6035 kc. (49-metre band) from 7.0 pm. to 10.30 p.m., has increased power to 6000 watts. The possibility of a session in English being included in the evening transmission is under consideration, and this will be well received in this country. Another chane nel, 3355 kc. (90-metre band) also carries the programmes, but with weaker signals,