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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.
AWR 30th Anniversary - On the Air Past and Present
This year is the 30th anniversary year for Adventist World Radio. The actual date for the first broadcast was October 1, 1971, and the location was Sines in Portugal.
Back a few weeks ago we prepared another special anniversary program, but we postponed the date of broadcast because of the sudden onslaught of events in the Middle East. In this edition of Wavescan we play catchup, and we now present this delayed program commemorating once more our AWR 30th anniversary, "On the Air--Past and Present".
It was on Monday, October 1, that Adventist World Radio celebrated its 30th anniversary. It was on that occasion back in the year 1971, through the work of Allen and Andrea Steele, that Radio Trans Europe carried the first AWR broadcast, a program in Italian beamed to the Italian peninsula.
Since that original historic broadcast, AWR has been on the air continually, and these days we are on the air 24 hours a day from international shortwave transmitters located in many different areas of the world. Let's take a look now at the lineup of shortwave stations that have carried AWR programming during the past 30 years.
Radio Trans Europe is located at Sines in coastal Portugal. They were operating two transmitters at 250 kW, with a third as a standby unit. For a period of 15 years, AWR was on the air from the two main units, and It would be safe to say in all actuality that all three units have carried AWR programming. The usage of this Deutsche Welle facility ended in 1972.
For a period of seven years, AWR was on the air from the two transmitters at another Deutsche Welle relay station, and this was Radio Mediterranean on the island of Malta. This station has since been dismantled.
Then again, for a period of nearly two years, AWR was also on the air from five different locations in Russia. These stations were located at Novosibirsk in Siberia, and Samara and Ekaterinburg, as well as Taldom and Kurovskaya near Moscow.
Beginning on January 1, 1994, the first AWR broadcast went on the air from the large shortwave station located at Rimavska Sobota in Slovakia. To inaugurate this significant new relay, special programs were broadcast live from the large Seventh-day Adventist church in Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. Additional relay services were taken out from the other Slovakian shortwave station, located at Velke Kostolany, though this station has also since been dismantled.
Before leaving Europe, we should mention several other stations that have carried AWR programming, and these were Radio Luxembourg, Radio Milan International, Radio Andorra, and more recently, Deutsche Telekom in Julich, Germany and Radio Austria International at Mossbrunn, near Vienna in Austria.
In the African scene, AWR programming was first placed on Radio Africa No. 1 in Gabon back in 1983, and currently, Sentech Radio at Meyerton in South Africa is carrying AWR programming. There is some evidence too that the Deutsche Welle relay station in Kigali, Rwanda also carried AWR programming for a brief period of time in a series of test broadcasts back around mid-year 1975.
Additionally, AWR is currently on the air from the Radio Netherlands relay station located on the island of Madagascar.
Over in Asia, the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation began the broadcast of Adventist programming on shortwave back in the year 1950, and 26 years later this series of programs in 10 languages was incorporated into the shortwave outreach of the AWR network.
In North America, AWR programmimg has been on the air from WRNO in New Orleans, Louisiana, KCBI in Dallas, Texas, and WHRI near Indianapolis in Indiana. For the past seven years, Radio Miami International, WRMI in Miami Florida, has been carrying our DX program, Wavescan.
In Central America, station TGMU was the first AWR unit, and it was followed by Radio Lira International, with its five shortwave transmitters located at Cahuita in Costa Rica.
We should remember also our own AWR station in Forli, Italy which went on the air back in 1985 with a 2.5 kW Collins transmitter and a rotatable log period antenna.
The AWR station on the island of Guam is KSDA, and it went on the air, again under the leadership of Allen and Andrea Steele, back in the year 1987. They are still on the air to this day with four transmitters at 100 kW, beaming AWR programming into Asia in a multitude of languages.
Thus it is that AWR programming has been on the air from a multitude of shortwave transmitters, located on all mainland continents, during the past 30 years.