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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N594, July 12, 2020
Unusual Shortwave Stations in Paraguay
Here in Wavescan today, we come to the final topic in our five-part mini-series on the radio scene in South American Paraguay. Our closing topic in this series is: Unusual Shortwave Stations in Paraguay, and we begin this story today, in Canada back last century.
It was on March 13, 1957 that mediumwave station CFAM was inaugurated at Altona, Manitoba, Canada with two transmitters at 1,000 watts each on 1290 kHz. This mediumwave commercial station was owned and operated by a Mennonite Christian congregation in a small town with a population of considerably less than two thousand people.
Eighteen years later, in 1975, station CFAM was operating with 10 kW on 950 kHz, and it was by this time the key station for a very successful small regional network of mediumwave and FM stations in the area, known as the Golden West Network.
During the Spring of that same year, 1975, mediumwave station CFAM in Alberta, Canada received a request from a small Mennonite community living in an isolated country location in Paraguay. They were asking for technical assistance in establishing a radio station in their town, Filadelfia, and so three men from the Canadian station CFAM (Ed Stoez, Jack Hoepner and Frank Kroeker) were despatched to Paraguay in South America.
Six months later, the new South American mediumwave radio station at Filadelfia in Paraguay was inaugurated on September 15, 1975 as La Voz del Chaco, ZP30, with 10 kW on 610 kHz. Their first radio studio was installed in the Mennonite Church building in Filadelfia, and the transmitter was installed in a small brick building at the end of a dirt track, some four miles out of town. Subsequently, the studio in the church building was extended, and later again a nice modern building was constructed in town to house the studio facilities.
There was no electrical infrastructure in that area of Paraguay, and we would suggest that the original program feed from the in-town studios to the out of town broadcast transmitter was via a modified amateur radio transmitter. For the first time, thirty years later, the 2005 edition of the WRTVHB shows that a low powered shortwave transmitter was on the air for La Voz del Chaco ZP30 in Filadelfia Paraguay, as a program feed.
This first listing of a 100 watt transmitter on the out of band channel 6884 kHz as a program feed would suggest that perhaps a subsequent modified amateur transmitter (operating with a power less than 100 watts?), was now providing the program feed from the studios to the broadcast transmitter.
Another mediumwave station in the underpopulated Chaco area of Paraguay is listed with a similar program feed from the studios to the broadcast transmitter, and this is the Catholic operated station Radio Pa'i Puku, ZP17. Their address is listed as 389 Kilometres, Transchaco Highway, Chaco.
Mediumwave Radio Pa'i Puku ZP17 began test transmissions on May 27, 1996, and they were officially inaugurated on September 13 of the following year, 1997. They began regular programming with a 25 kW transmitter on 720 kHz, and then in 2013 they installed a 50 kW transmitter, on the same mediumwave channel.
This station also utilizes a shortwave transmitter, listed with 100 watts on 6890 kHz, as a program feed from the studios to the mediumwave transmitter. Perhaps we could surmise that Radio Pa'i Puku also employs a modified amateur transmitter for their program feed.
For a couple of years (2004 and 2005), Radio America was listed with a very low power shortwave station in Paraguay, with just 5 watts on 7370 kHz. This station was located with the Colegio Tecnico Municipal Santa Rosa de Lima at Nemby in suburban Asuncion.
Radio America was associated with another very low powered shortwave station, Radio Licemil, at a military encampment at Ypane in suburban Asuncion. Radio Licemil is a training facility for military personnel and it operates irregularly with a listed 1 watt output on 12,000 kHz.
This station, Radio Licemil, with just 1 watt, has to be the lowest powered shortwave radio broadcasting station in the world, though half a century ago, there was another experimental broadcasting station rated at the same power level in the British Isles, somewhere up near the border between England and Scotland.
So, at the end of 85 years of shortwave broadcasting in South American Paraguay, there are just three stations left, none of which are presenting what we would call a regular broadcasting service: