YouTube VideoORTF NOUMÉA, NEW CALEDONIA670 kHz MediumwaveFrom 1973
It's amazing what one finds in a clean-up! All sorts of things suddenly materialise, seemingly out of thin air! Such was the case a few days ago when I discovered a very old cassette tape (remember those?) full of recordings made between 1972 and '73 of mediumwave (AM) broadcasters!
As is often the case with magnetic tape, the ravages of time have played their part in the deterioration of these recordings. This is sad to see, but that's the way things go. Personally, I've certainly suffered the very same ravages of time - I ain't the same guy I was back in 1972!!! Wiser, maybe, but loooooong past my physical peak!
Anyway, I have begun the laborious task of cataloguing, digitising and mastering some of this raw audio, just to see if I can resurrect a few of these recordings. In the process, many long-forgotten memories have come flooding back - memories of receivers, antennas, DXpeditions, QSL cards, and enthusiastic like-minded friends from years past.
Here is the first completed recording. I chose to start with the easiest one, the recording with some half-decent audio quality. It took an evening of work to bring it up to a reasonable quality.
The Pacific nation of New Caledonia is still an overseas territory of France (France d'outre-mer), the remains of the French colonial empire. This, despite calls by some, for the nation to gain independence, with several referendum attempts falling short of the required numbers to make independence a reality. At the last (2019) census, the country's population was only 271,000. The history is interesting and worth exploring.
Long-time DXers will remember when, between 1964 and 1974, France and all its dependencies lived under the umbrella of the public broadcaster Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF). And so, during this time French overseas possessions in far-flung places like Reunion Island, Tahiti, Comoro Islands, as well as some African nations included the title of ORTF in the names of their national broadcasters.
The recording below is from the last part of that ORTF period. It was recorded on August 15, 1973 at my home in suburban Melbourne when I was 19 years old. I think the receiver was a Lafayette HA230. The antenna was a small indoor rotatable loop antenna. It was originally recorded on a reel-to-reel machine, and at some point, I must have transferred it to the current cassette tape.
What you hear is the opening of the morning service at 1900 UTC. It begins with a bird call interval signal, the French anthem and a frequency announcement.
QUIZ: Identify the chirpy little bird on the interval signal!
So, that's the first of the mediumwave recordings. The rest of them are going to require quite a bit more work to improve their audio quality.
73 and good DX to you all.
Rob Wagner VK3BVW
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© Rob Wagner, Mount Evelyn DX Report, and contributors 2012-2024
There was an similar recording made by Dave Stuart VK3ASE from the same time as this recording was made when he recommended a sweep of the AM broadcast band after the ABC stations signed off for the night that was recorded in Melbourne.
ReplyDeleteThere was an similar recording made by Dave Stuart VK3ASE from the same time as this recording was made when he recommended a sweep of the AM broadcast band after the ABC stations signed off for the night that was recorded in Melbourne.
ReplyDeleteI always remember as a young teenage DXer in the US thumbing through the WRTVH, seeing the Noumea interval signal described as "Call of the Cagou bird" or something like that. I used to fantasize about what the mysterious Cagou bird would sound like, and what he was saying. Thanks for the recording, now I know!!
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