[IRCA] Pitcairn radio history

[Glenn Hauser <wghauser@xxxxxxxxx>]

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 ¼ 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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