[IRCA] Radio adventure in the Cook Islands

[Walter Salmaniw <canswl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings to all!  Having rented a car this afternoon, I spent about 3
hours driving around the island, exploring, especially any radio
sites.  There are precious few stations around it seems.  In Avarua
town, the only real town on the island of Rarotonga does have a FM
station (sign on the main road) for Matariki FM
(www.matarikifm.co.ck).  Apparently they have 3 repeaters, which must
be a handful of watts each and are listed as follows:

96.7 (Matavera to Black Rock  (basically the north coast)
91.9 (Black Rock to Tikioki)  I think this is the west and south coast
99.9  (Tikioki to Matavera)   Must be the east coast.

We’re staying in the south west corner of the island.  I started by
driving inland and followed the inner circle road for most of it’s
length.  Very interesting as well!  This is the old Cook Islands with
all the farms, large estates, and other interesting things like the
prison and hospital (lovely view of the north island from there).

Just a few hundred meters inland from my location, I ran across an
antenna farm consisting of 3 dipole arrays, facing east/west,
north/south, and across the road, NW/SE.  There’s a building there
too, and looking at it closely, there’s a small sign on the door
(locked) as follows:  Ministry of Transport    Civil Aviation Division
   Receiver station.
Co-ordinates are as follows:   S 21 deg 15 min  05.680 sec/  W 159 deg
48min 50.054 sec.  This is about 4 km south of the airport.  I found
it strictly by accident.  I’m not sure of the HF frequencies used by
Rarotonga, but I suspect they are rarely used.  There’s not a lot of
traffic in and out of the airport.  Perhaps there’s a VOLMET service.
I’m not sure.
     Continuing south, I explored the large abandoned Sheraton Resort
in the SW corner of the island near Vaimaanga.  It’s a very imposing
site with many buildings up to 3 stories hight which was almost
finished, but then abandoned.  Apparently, one of the principles took
off with the money, and it was never completed.  A real shame, as it
would have been gorgeous, judging from the large soaker tubs in many
of the rooms, now slowly reverting to nature with all the windows
broken, and graffiti everywhere.

     Continuing north on the east side of the island, I returned to
the transmitter site of Radio Cook Islands.  The coordinates are as
follows:
     S 21 deg 13 min 05.285 sec   and W 159 deg 44 min 09.391 sec at
an elevation of 12’ according to my GPS on the smart phone.  It’s
directly at the north-west corner of the Matavera school.  Again,
absolutely no markings, other than “high voltage” signs in English and
Cook Island Maori.  Not a hint of any broadcast significance.  The
tower, itself, appears to be about 200’ high, and has fading red/white
painting.  No obvious light on the top.  Plenty of guy wires across
the school yard.  PAL lists 2.5 kW.  It doesn’t get out that well even
on the island.  Not bad, but not super strong.  I didn’t see any sign
of studios, which I’m assuming are in Avarua town.  This is a very
poor island, so finances are always very tight here.  The people,
though, are absolutely very friendly, even though, they are quite
difficult to understand.  Heavily accented English, quite slurred, it
would seem.  They don’t understand us very well either, so we usually
have to repeat ourselves a time or two, before being understood!
     Towards the end of my circle journey, I drove on the mountain
side of the airport to find the other antenna farm, located on the
south-west side of the airport at the following
Coordinates:  S 21 deg 12 min 26.29 sec/  W 159 deg 49 min 06.09 sec.
The antennae are located on a 9 hole golf course.  Besides dipoles,
there also was a fan array, as well as a long-wire end fed antenna.
I’m assuming this is the transmission site for the airport.

     Anyway, I hope you find this a bit interesting.  Internet runs
$0.30 per MB, so I’m very careful with downloading anything!  It’s
reasonably quick, though, at least compared to cruise ships.  After 6
days, I’ve used 30 of my 50 MB allotment.

     A quick comment on MW reception.  During the day, only 630 is
audible.  Late in the evening, Hawaii, New Zealand, and RFO Tahiti are
all heard reasonably well, especially after around 08:00 UTC.  Lot’s
of hets, too, presumably from North/Central American stations.  One
frequency that I found interesting was 880, heard earlier this week
discussing Nebraska public schools.  Is there a Nebraska AM station on
880?  1440 Kiribati is often quite strong.  “One minute to 7” heard at
07:00 in English, in an otherwise local language programming.
     On SW, daytime is pretty dismal, but at night, there is some
interesting things to hear:

15120  Voice of Nigeria at good level in English at 05:56, over a
co-channel (?CRI)
17665:  VORWS at excellent level at 02:12 in English.  15630 also very
good, while 17690 was only poor.
11905:  SLBC fair/good with subcontinental music, and English news at
02:17 to 02:20.
Last night, 8 Dec:
17780  Radio Romania International at good/very good level in English
at 06:30, // 21600 almost as good, 9600 DRM with very loud buzz, and
7310 probably the strongest of all of the frequencies, even though I’m
sure it’s not directed to the Pacific.
6160	CBC at poor level with the loud het from Nfld. At 06:33
6070:  CFRX weak with cochannel at 0637
9505:  Sudan with excellent signal and horn of Africa music at 06:42,
then “Sudaniya” heard.  They then gave an internet address (including
sudanradio), then “Obdurman, Sudan.  Then OC, which was still there at
06:45.

73 to all!  Walt Salmaniw, Rarotonga, Cook Islands

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