Re DXLD 9-055, it so happens that Adrian Peterson recently rebroadcast his
Pitcairn radio history. It does not get into the more recent developments of
sexual abuse involving many of the islanders as in DXLD 4-169 and
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/07/world/fg-pitcairn7
The Pitcairn Story - 01:03
Pitcairn Island, down there somewhere in the South Pacific, is one of the most
isolated islands in the world, and it would vie with Easter Island as the
loneliest island on our planet. A map of the world would show us that Pitcairn
is situated five thousand miles from Australia and four thousand miles from
South America.
This lonely, remote island is a rocky out-crop jutting up from the floor of the
deep Pacific Ocean. It has an area of just two square miles, and its highest
hill, Lookout Point, is just eleven hundred feet above sea level.
Pitcairn is never visited by plane, and seldom by ship. Its main source of
income is from the sale of their beautifully colored postage stamps, and also
from locally made curios and handicrafts. In more recent time, they have made
some income from the sale of foodstuffs, including bottles of Pitcairn Honey.
The saga of Pitcairn Island, and the drama regarding the mutiny of the Bounty,
have often been chronicled in books and magazines, and portrayed on stage and
theater screen as well as on TV. In fact, Marlon Brando portrayed the now
notorious Fletcher Christian in the 1962 Hollywood movie, "Mutiny on the
Bounty".
Archaeological research indicates that the first inhabitants on Pitcairn Island
were Polynesian peoples who came in, probably from Mangareva Island, some three
hundred miles to the northwest. The available evidence would suggest that the
Polynesians brought in bread fruit trees, and bananas, and other fruit trees
and they must have stayed on Pitcairn for a lengthy period of time, even
several centuries. Early Polynesian legends tell of visits to Pitcairn, but
apparently they all migrated elsewhere before the arrival of the first European
explorers.
Interestingly, a small stone statue, with its back to the sea, was found on
Pitcairn by the first European settlers more than two hundred years ago. This
stone statue reminds us of the similar, though much larger, stone statues,
found on distant Easter Island.
Pitcairn Island was discovered by the English navigator Philip Carteret in 1767
and it was named in honor of Midshipman Pitcairn who was the first to sight the
island. The island lay dormant on the navigation charts of the Pacific for a
third of a century.
In the year 1790, nine mutineers from HMS "Bounty" together with eighteen
Tahitian men and women, landed ashore at Bounty Bay on the north-eastern edge
of Pitcairn Island. They removed everything possible from the ship and then
burned the hull; and in this way they turned their backs on the rest of the
world.
Forty years later, when a drought threatened the Pitcairners, they were all
removed to Tahiti, but during the following year, they all returned. Then, a
quarter century later again, when the population grew too large, the entire
colony was transferred to Norfolk Island. However, two or three years after
that, several families began to return to Pitcairn Island. It was in the year
1890 that the islanders established the Seventh-day Adventist church building
in the main square area of Adamstown, Pitcairn Island.
Beginning in 1926, postage stamps from New Zealand were in use on Pitcairn
Island. The first Pitcairn postage stamps were issued in 1940, and the first
post office was constructed during the following year. Just three years ago,
new coins were minted for Pitcairn Island but these are more for the interest
of coin collectors than for circulation on the island.
The population on Pitcairn Island reached a peak of 223 in 1937; and today, the
total population is less than fifty. A large number of the Pitcairners are
licensed amateur radio operators; and telephone contact with the outside world
is nowadays maintained by satellite.
Radio Stations on Lonely Pitcairn Island - 07:44
The story of radio broadcasting on Pitcairn Island is also a very interesting
saga and it dates from the very earliest times. We go back to the very
beginning and this is what happened.
During a voyage across the Pacific in the year 1921, the New Zealand ship
"Rimutaka" stopped at Pitcairn Island and the captain handed a Morse Code
message on a card to the island Magistrate, Mr Fred Christian. Several
islanders showed an interest in this card, including the young man, Andrew
Young. He determined that he would learn how to signal passing ships at night
by flashing them in Morse Code, using a flashlight.
After a lot of practice at learning Morse Code, Andrew was successful one night
in flashing a message to a passing ship and the ship's radio operator replied
in a similar manner. This ship was thus the first to stop at Pitcairn Island
through the usage of Morse Code.
The Marconi Company in England heard about this event and during the following
year they sent out two crystal set receivers and a small spark transmitter.
However, the islanders were unsuccessful in operating the equipment; and some
time later the captain of another ship from New Zealand sent his radio operator
ashore to fix the problem. Soon afterwards, another passing ship, the
"Corinthic", was contacted by wireless for the very first time, using the
re-vitalized Marconi equipment.
During the year 1926, Robert Hare, an Adventist pastor from New Zealand, took a
small 12 volt spark coil transmitter to Pitcairn Island and this was in use for
a short while in making contact with passing ships. This equipment was rated at
ΒΌ kW and it was powered by an engine from a motor vehicle. However, petrol was
in short supply on Pitcairn and the equipment was in use for only a short
period of time.
In January 1937, the radio operator on board the schooner "Yankee", Allan
Eurich, spent a week on Pitcairn Island during the ship's second world tour. He
investigated the radio equipment on the island, and subsequently wrote an
article that was published in "QST Magazine". This article created a great
interest in the United States and two men, Granville Lindley and Lewis Bellem,
assembled a quantity of radio equipment that was donated by eighteen different
radio companies. It was carried to Pitcairn Island by another New Zealand ship,
this time the "Rangitata".
This ship arrived off the coast of Pitcairn Island at 8:20 pm during a
thunderstorm. However, on March 1, 1938, the two men, Lindley and Bellem, went
ashore at Bounty Bay and they brought ashore four and a half tons of radio
equipment, as well as a package of QSL cards, and a batch of radio envelopes.
The radio equipment was set up and the station went on the air four days later,
and it was officially inaugurated on March 18, 1938.
Originally, the callsign in use for amateur transmissions was VR6A, though
shortly afterwards, the callsign was amended to VR6AY, with the letters AY
indicating the operator, Andrew Young. Officially, the callsign for use with
the relay of broadcast programming was PITC, but there is very little evidence
that this callsign was ever in use on air.
The first transmissions from Pitcairn were amateur in nature and the fortunate
first QSO contact was with amateur station W8CNA in the United States. Other
amateur QSO contacts followed quite quickly.
The first commercial tests on 15320 kHz were made a few days later in contact
with the RCA communication station located at Bolinas in California. These
original tests were made with KKW on 13780 kHz and KKR on 15460 kHz. The
antenna on Pitcairn was a rhombic beamed on San Francisco.
During the month of April, three radio broadcasts, quite short in duration,
were made from Pitcairn Island to NBC in the United States. Interestingly on a
subsequent occasion, everybody on the island was ready to make a choir
broadcast when suddenly a ship was sited off the coast. This event interrupted
the choir broadcast, which was never again re-staged.
When the American engineers left the island on May 5, the radio station was
left under the complete control of Andrew Young. At this stage, the major usage
of the radio equipment was for amateur QSOs, and for communication with nearby
shipping.
Six months later, the first subsequent delivery of mail came in by steamer,
including a total of five hundred reception reports addressed to the radio
station VR6AY.
Early in the next year, 1939, the radio equipment began to develop faults;
first the battery charger and then the transmitter itself. Some of these
problems were corrected by radio officers on passing ships, but ultimately in
the spring, the faulty equipment was loaded onto a ship and taken to amateur
station NY2AE in the Panama Canal Zone for repair. Towards the end of this same
year, the radio equipment was loaded back onto another ship bound for the
Pacific, and for Pitcairn.
At this stage, Admiral Richard Byrd, who was now on his third expedition to
Antarctica, stopped at Pitcairn Island for two days and dropped off some much
needed food for the islanders. His radio officers also repaired the receivers
still in use on Pitcairn.
After an absence of nine months, the radio station was re-installed on
Pitcairn, and re-activated, still under the same callsign VR6AY. However, by
this time hostilities had broken out in Europe at the beginning of World War 2,
and events in the Pacific took another turn. We will present the second episode
of "Radio Broadcasting on Pitcairn Island" on another occasion.
In the meantime, we should say that these days, the QSL cards verifying radio
station PITC-VR6AY, as well as the associated radio envelopes, are valuable
collector's items. There were two printings of the original QSL card, one as
VR6A, and one as VR6AY; and both versions are highly prized.
The Unfinished Story of Radio Broadcasting on Pitcairn Island - 01.03
In our program last week, you heard two aspects of information about Pitcairn
Island; the introductory story of the island and its people, and the early
wireless years on the island. In that program, you heard about the early usage
of wireless for communication with nearby shipping, and also the story of the
radio station with the double callsign, VR6AY-PITC, which was in use for
amateur communication and also for occasional relay broadcasts to the United
States. Today, we continue with additional information in this interesting saga
as we present the story of radio broadcasting on Pitcairn Island.
We go back to the epic year 1939. There was trouble over there in Europe, the
ambitious American National Geographic Expedition to Pitcairn Island was
cancelled, and the low power 60 watt shortwave transmitter VR6AY was still on
the air, though not heard widely.
There was an amateur radio operator in New Zealand by the name of Nelson Dyett,
with the callsign ZL2FR. He had married a Pitcairn girl and he volunteered to
go out to isolated Pitcairn Island, to take his own amateur radio equipment,
and install it on the island. This project was granted approval by the New
Zealand navy.
Four men went to Pitcairn for this project, and they constructed a hut for use
as the radio station and they installed all of the radio station equipment.
This station was in use for communication with nearby shipping and with New
Zealand, and it was known variously as a station operated by the British navy
or the New Zealand navy. It was identified in radio magazines as VR6AY, the
older licensed amateur callsign, and VR6AA, the amateur callsign that Dyett
used on Pitcairn.
However, give three more years, and the New Zealand navy sent out additional
radio equipment on a ship that broke down in mid ocean and had to be towed back
to Auckland in New Zealand. A few weeks later, in May 1944, the vital radio
equipment was delivered to Pitcairn, and a contingent of men constructed
buildings and installed equipment, which included 2 transmitters, 2 receivers,
2 diesel generators, and a rhombic antenna system. This station was now noted
on air under the callsign ZKG.
Later in the same year, the station was upgraded with additional equipment
which included meteorological equipment for weather forecasting. When Pitcairn
Radio was heard on air with weather information, the callsign was noted as ZBF.
As circumstances would have it, additional shortwave equipment from New Zealand
was installed in 1952, and the callsign of Pitcairn Radio was changed to ZBP.
Soon afterwards, plans were implemented for the use of station ZBP as a radio
broadcasting station for coverage of nearby islands throughout the Pacific
areas. The prestigious World Radio TV Handbook listed the scheduling for the
broadcast of this planned programming, though there are no known monitoring
reports of any actual program broadcasts from ZBP.
However, in 1962, the radio station was again completely rebuilt, and plans
were announced once again for the broadcast of radio programming for coverage
of nearby Pacific islands; and once again, there are no known monitoring
reports of any radio broadcasts from this station.
Well, in 1985, the station was once again upgraded, but this time no plans were
announced for radio broadcasting. However, international radio monitors in New
Zealand and the United States noted that they heard Pitcairn Radio, ZBP, with a
musical identification signal and bird chirps, before moving into phone traffic
to New Zealand.
In 1994, the station was closed in favor of satellite communication with New
Zealand. An attempt was made to stage a final radio broadcast from the station,
but the government authorities would not permit. So, Pitcairn Radio, with all
of its varied forms of equipment and its usage of half a dozen callsigns over
the years, quietly left the air, never to return.
However, there is yet more to this story. David Ricquish in New Zealand informs
us that the New Zealand air Force installed a 50 watt mediumwave transmitter on
the island in January 1978, and that it was on the air with general traffic for
the South Pacific for just five days.
In addition, there was in reality, a series of test broadcasts radiated from
Pitcairn Island as a preliminary to establishing a regular radio broadcasting
service. At the end of the year 1961 and the early part of 1962, a series of
test broadcasts was on the air from amateur station VR6AC, operated by Floyd
McCoy. Programming consisted of re-broadcasts of the religious program, "Voice
of Prophecy", taken from the large discs produced in Los Angeles, California.
One listener in the United States was honored to receive a QSL letter from
VR6AC verifying his reception of these broadcasts.
Then, four years later again, there was a repeat attempt at test broadcasts
from VR6AC, and these were noted again in the United States. However, due to
the difficult logistics that would be involved, no permanent radio broadcasting
service was ever established on Pitcairn Island.
So, there really was radio broadcasting from Pitcairn Island, and it occurred
on three separate occasions. Back in the year 1938, there was a short series of
program broadcasts from station PITC as a relay to the NBC network in the
United States via KKW at the RCA radio station located at Bolinas in
California. Then, in 1961 and 1966, there were two additional attempts at radio
broadcasting from the island with the launching of two series of test
broadcasts from amateur station VR6AC.
It should be added, that QSLs do exist for these brief bursts of radio
broadcasting from this lonely and isolated volcanic outcrop in the South
Pacific, known to us all as Pitcairn Island. Many QSL cards have been issued by
Floyd McCoy for amateur QSO contacts from his station VR6AC. In addition, there
were two printings of the QSL card issued for station PITC. The first card,
with a known print run of 1500 copies, shows the callsign VR6A. The second
printing gives the callsign as VR6AY and it is probable that a total of 1500
cards were printed in this batch also.
The VR6A & VR6AY QSL cards show the radio equipment in use and also a map of
the Pacific showing the location of Pitcairn Island. These unique QSL cards
command a very good price when sold on eBay. Back in the middle of last
century, some of these cards were sold as tourist items to passengers on
visiting ship. The cards are stamped with New Zealand postage stamps and they
were cancelled with the Pitcairn Island cancellation (Adrian Peterson, IN, AWR
Wavescan scripts July 5 and 12, 2009 via DXLD)
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