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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 N608, October 18, 2020
Return to Nepal - 2: Radio Broadcasting from Mt. Everest
Mount Everest, known as Sagarmatha by the people of Nepal, was named Everest in honor of Sir George Everest, the prominent Welsh Surveyor-General of India, towards the middle 1800s. Mount Everest itself is not a single, isolated mountain, but rather it is a high peak among a multitude of high peaks in the ranges of the Himalaya mountains that separate India from the Chinese areas of Central Asia.
This mountain in total stands at 29,029 feet (about 5-1/2 miles) above mean sea level, and the officially recognized international border between Nepal and Tibet in China runs right across the summit. Up there the wind speed can sometimes reach 200 miles an hour. The lowest recorded temperature was -76 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 100 degrees below freezing.
During the past 100 years, more than 200 climbing expeditions have attempted to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, and nearly 7,000 people have been successful, though the attempts have resulted in more than 300 deaths. The first attempt began when a British reconnaissance party of half a dozen men set out from Darjeeling in India on May 18, 1921. Their 300 mile trek took them from India through Sikkim into Tibet, with a climb on Mt. Everest from the north.
It is thought that the first successful attempt at climbing Mt. Everest might have been made by George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on June 8, 1924, though apparently both men perished on the way down in a massive storm next day.
In 1953, New Zealander Sir Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made the first verified successful climb of Mt. Everest. The first American expedition in 1975 is listed as the largest ever, with a total of more than 1,000 personnel; climbers, porters and support staff. The greatest number of people upon Everest in any one year was 772 climbers last year (2019), and they actually had traffic jams on the narrow ledges near the top.
The first woman to successfully climb Everest was the Japanese Junko Tabei in 1975; the first twin girls were the 21 year old sisters Tashi and Nungshi Malik from India in 2013; and the youngest girl to successfully reach the summit was another Indian girl, 13 year old Malavath Purna, during the following year 2014.
The first Everest expedition to use radio was the British team in 1933. After the British expedition in 1924, the Dalai Lama of Tibet banned all Everest expeditions due to adverse publicity, and the British expedition of 1933 was the first allowed after the ban was lifted.
Three shortwave communication radio stations were in use in 1933; a fixed station at Darjeeling in Bengal in India. and two portable stations for use on the Everest mountainside. The operators discovered that the most successful channels were in the shortwave bands from 40 to 60 metres, and the best time for communication was in the early morning.
This three-station communication network used voice when possible and Morse Code when needed. The chief operator was William Smyth-Windham. In addition to operational communications, the operators also tuned in to the broadcast of radio programming on shortwave and local mediumwave for news and entertainment.
Englishman Maurice Wilson made a solo attempt at climbing Everest during the following year (1934), and before his tragic death on the mountain he made a radio report on his progress.
Another British expedition two years later (1936) used what they called lightweight radio communication transceivers on Everest, for the first time. These radios weighed 15 pounds each. Once again, William Smyth-Windham was their Chief Radio Operator and the control station was installed, again at Darjeeling.
Sixteen years later (1953), there was another major expedition on Mt. Everest, this time by a joint British-New Zealand team. It was at 11:30 am on Friday, May 29 (1953) that New Zealander Edmund Hillary, together with Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, successfully achieved the Mt. Everest summit, the world's tallest mountain, that stands between Nepal and China.
The epic-breaking first-ever successful ascent on Mt. Everest by New Zealander (later Sir) Edmund Hillary and Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953 was granted rapid worldwide news coverage. They took VHF Walkie-Talkies on the climb for communication, but there was no base camp shortwave radio station due to the fact that this expedition was already large and expensive.
While on the climb, Hillary carried a shortwave receiver, and he tuned in to the Commercial Service of Radio Ceylon for programming and news, which included informational relays from the BBC in London. He reported that the signal strength from the transmitters at Ekala was excellent; the programming came in loud and clear.
At the summit at 11:30 am on Friday, May 29, Hillary took several appropriate color photographs of the occasion, and the two mountaineers then began their descent. When they reached the Advance Camp, still quite high on Everest, they used their Walkie-Talkie to inform Base Camp way down below that they had achieved their prized ascent, the first verified successful climb to the top.
Waiting at Base Camp below was James Morris, a credited correspondent with the London Times newspaper. As soon as Morris heard the news of the successful climb, he wrote out a message which he gave to a Nepali runner who quickly ran the message to the nearest shortwave communication station, at Namche Bazaar. Namche Bazaar in Nepal is a tourist shopping town some 30 miles southwest from Mt. Everest.
The shortwave station at Namche Bazaar sent the success message to the British Embassy in Kathmandu, who radioed the information to London. Interestingly, this grand news was broadcast worldwide on Coronation Day (June 2, 1953) for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, a fitting tribute for the 27 year old Queen.
The huge American expedition in 1963 used shortwave radio for communication and also for news coverage. A Reuters news reporter in Kathmandu, Miss Elizabeth Hawley, received progressive news reports by radio from the mountainside, and she forwarded the information on to the United States for worldwide distribution.
Another 16 years later, there was a joint Everest expedition with Germany and France in co-operation. Early in the year 1979, a seven member team from the two European nations carried a portable transmitter from which they made periodic broadcasts describing their onward progress towards the summit.
These mountain broadcasts were picked up on a receiver at the French embassy in Kathmandu, and then uplinked to Symphonie, the Franco-German satellite over the Indian Ocean. This programming was then fed into the local and international radio services in both France and Germany, and in many other countries also. From the summit, they described the expansive panorama over India and China as breathtaking.
In 1988, two teams of personnel from Japan, China and Nepal scaled Everest, one from the north and the other from the south. By previous arrangement, they met at the summit, and then crossed over for the descent. Live TV coverage was provided throughout the expedition.
Canada has also been involved in similar mountaineering projects at Everest, and they established a complete TV studio in the Hotel Everest Sheraton in Kathmandu from where TV programming was beamed by satellite to homeland audiences in Canada, as well as to the BBC in London and NHK in Tokyo. To accomplish this series of TV relay programs, it required 300 porters to carry all of the TV equipment to Base Camp at Mt. Everest.
Coming soon: The Radio Scene on the Other Mt. Everest