After the mysterious story a month or so ago about the 2MC Fun Bus and how it ended up atop Lunatic Lookout in Lightning Ridge, Radioinfo got another email on the weekend from a gentleman called Russell.
Russell was in East Gippsland Victoria, not far from the most Southern point of mainland Australia. At about 8:30pm on Saturday night November 2 he was flicking through radio stations when he heard a most unusual call sign.
It was 918 on the AM dial, and the station he heard was 4VL, a Resonate Radio station located in Charleville, Queensland.
For those, like me, not crash hot on geography, Charleville is (besides being a famous Slim Dusty song written by Cold Chisel’s Don Walker) not on the coast of Queensland. It’s about 800kms inland.
It is also about 1600kms from East Gippsland. Or, if you want to use The Proclaimers, you’d have to walk 500 miles, then 500 more.
But also applicable from Charleville QLD to East Gippsland Victoria
Can anyone exceed a thousand miles over land?
There’s a line in another song that features Don Walker, Whenever it Snows by Tex Perkins, Charlie Owen and Don, which is about living at the top of Australia and the woman commenting how isolated they are with Tex replying, but we get Indonesian radio, which would be, over the ocean, about 2500 kms.
But this does just goes to show that nothing can beat, for distance, good old AM radio.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo
500 miles is 800 km. If the frequency is increased from the AM band to the high frequency band (Short Wave) signals are reflected from the ionosphere which is in the upper atmosphere.
Until the BBC high frequency transmitter in Singapore was closed due to the sale of the land, I would listen to their Digital Radio Mondiale signal daily. It sounds better than local AM. Signal path was 4000 km long.
Radio New Zealand Pacific also transmits high frequency DRM. Recently I have heard it in the South coast of NSW 2500 km from the transmitter in the North Island. There is a number of Pacific Island countries who receive these excellent signals and retransmit them on FM for their local community. This signal can be received anywhere in the South Pacific including on the ocean.
In August this year Radio New Zealand started broadcasting from their new $AU 4 million
transmitter. It accompanies a second DRM/AM transmitter. They have these investments because they will work during cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes where satellite and undersea cabled internet often fails.