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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 N646, July 11, 2021

More about Shortwave Radio Saigon (Part 2)

In our program two weeks back, we left the story about Radio Saigon in South Vietnam just after they pretended to be NIROM Radio at Bandoeng on the Indonesian island of Java. And that's where we pick up the sequential story of Radio Saigon in our program today.

Three months later, in June 1942, Radio Saigon in Japanese-occupied South Vietnam was noted in the United States with an off-air program relay from Radio Tokyo in Japan. Four months later again (October 1942), Radio Saigon began the broadcast of programs beamed specifically to Australia, often with brief messages from Australian prisoners of war. During these eras, Radio Saigon was noted frequently on its two standard frequencies in parallel, 6185 kHz and 11780 kHz, though it was never allocated a specifically Japanese callsign, as was the case in several other countries in Asia.

Three years later, on Friday evening. March 9, 1945, Japanese army personnel arrived at the station at 9:30 p.m., and they arrested the four staff members still on duty, two men and two women. Next day, the four prisoners were permitted to return to their individual homes, though Radio Saigon was staffed then onwards by Japanese personnel only. The last day on which messages from Australian POWs was included in their programming beamed to Australia was two month later, on May 31 (1945).

In early September (1945), a few days after the end of the Pacific War, Japanese personnel handed Radio Saigon over to the Viet Minh, a political party in favor of independence for Vietnam, and the Japanese then quietly disappeared. However, the Viet Minh also absconded just as quickly. British personnel began to arrive in Saigon a few days later, during the first week in September, and they found little more than chaos in many areas.

Radio Saigon was reactivated by several of its earlier staff on Wednesday, September 26 (1945), and the revived station limped along with whatever equipment it could find useful. However, at 10:20 a.m. on Monday, April 8 of the next year (1946), a massive series of explosions at a huge ammunition dump destroyed everything in reach, including the nearby studios of Radio Saigon.

The station resumed broadcasting at 6:00 p.m. that same evening from a temporary studio in a private suburban home, with the use of borrowed equipment from the Post Office and the army. The former studio building was rebuilt, though the four mile distant transmitter building was not affected by those events.

At that stage, Radio Saigon was on the air with three broadcast transmitters which were located near an Annamese village at outer suburban Phu-Tho. Mediumwave 1050 kHz operated at 1.5 kW, and shortwave operated with two transmitters at 12 kW each.

However, change was on the way. Half a dozen years later, two French shortwave transmitters at 25 kW each, and one at 5 kW, were installed. Originally, Radio Saigon was identified as the Voice of France in the Far East, though in the mid-1950s this powerful French radio broadcasting station was taken over by the independent government of South Vietnam, and Radio France Asie became Radiodiffusion du Vietnam, Radio Vietnam. The internationally recognized callsign at that stage was 3WT.

The quarter century old Colonial French radio station Radio France Asie, Radio Saigon, is now well and truly gone, and these days it is remembered now only by a few of the oldest surviving radio personnel, those who were active in the middle of last century.

Communication Station Saigon Radio

The original communication radio station in South Vietnam, Saigon Radio was installed in 1924. This station was heard in Australia under the callsign FZS seven years later, in August 1931. This Saigon Radio was noted on 11990 kHz with a power of 9 kW, and it was in use for communication with other countries in Asia, and with Bordeaux in the European mother country, France. In 1935, Saigon Radio was listed with three shortwave transmitters, two at 15 kW (FZR & FZS), and one at 6 kW (FZG).

On special occasions, and when radio broadcasting station Radio Saigon wished to be heard specifically in France, then a program relay from Radio Saigon was carried by communication station Saigon Radio. Occasional program relays of this nature were heard in both Australia and the United States, and two of the known frequencies for this purpose were 11990 kHz and 18388 kHz.


Canada's Highest Ever Temperature [Low Power Relays]

On Tuesday, June 29 (2021), Canada experienced its highest ever weather temperature, a sweltering 49.6° Centigrade (121.3° Fahrenheit), at the small town of Lytton in the western province of British Columbia. The previous highest weather temperature in Canada was 45° (113° Fahrenheit) in the province of Saskatchewan in 1937. This new 2021 record is 8° higher than the previous record that was set some 84 years ago.

However, because of the excessively high temperatures for three days in a row at Lytton two weeks back, nearby forest fires have caused local havoc. On Wednesday evening, Mayor Jan
Polderman ordered an immediate evacuation of all 300 residents in Lytton, in advance of a 50 miles an hour windblown fire coming in from the south. Next day, news reports indicated that the ravaging fire took just 15 minutes to engulf the entire town, and it destroyed literally 90% of the buildings.

Massive smoke clouds from the fire at Lytton, and from other nearby fires also, rose up high and spread widely, so much so that their huge size was filmed from satellites. These smoke and dust filled clouds developed their own weather patterns, and three quarters of a million lightning strikes were registered in less than one day.

Back around 40 years ago, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) began to establish a nationwide network of small low powered mediumwave slave relay stations in small isolated
communities. The first of these LPRT (low power relay transmitters) were installed in this same western province of British Columbia.

Each of these LPRT (low power relay transmitters) was installed in a local community building, such as a railway station, post office, community building or even a commercial facility. The power rating for each LPRT station was usually 20 watts or 40 watts, simply enough to permit good listening locally, and they were locked in permanently to the CBC programming from a large nearby center. The audio quality from these low powered mediumwave relay transmitters was absolutely superb.

One of those early LPRT transmitters was installed towards the southern end of the town of Lytton (which runs on the eastern side of the Fraser River), and it operated under the unannounced callsign CBRE on 1080 kHz. However, over a period of time, the coverage from mediumwave CBRE was inadequate, even in the town of Lytton where it was installed, due to local interference, both QRN and QRM.

Consequently, half a dozen years later, in 1987, the CBC installed an FM LPRT station at that same location in Lytton, under the callsign CBTY with 183 watts on 93.1 MHz. CBTY FM and CBRE AM ran in parallel for one year, then the mediumwave unit was switched off in 1988.

This slave downlink FM relay station carried the CBC Radio One programming in English from the CBC coordinating studios in Kamloops, BC. The Master Control Studios for Radio One nationwide programming are located in Toronto, and the Kamloops studios insert local programming for regional areas in British Columbia.

There was also a small low powered commercial FM station in Lytton, CIAK, which was also a slave relay on 102.3 MHz with Canada wide syndicated programming from Vancouver in British
Columbia.

The latest announcement from Lytton in British Columbia Canada is that the townspeople are beginning to plan on the rebuilding of their entire community.