[K3PZN-List] Fw: Invitation to view Pete's Picasa Web Album - 20090723 Radio Canada International

[Peter Morton]

I'm experimenting here.  Don't know if this will work on the reflector.

Last week while vacationing in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, we stopped at the Radio Canada International shortwave broadcast station located in the salt marshes at the head of the Bay of Fundy near Sackville, New Brunswick.  I had toured the station on my honeymoon 41 years ago.  A lot has changed since then.

When we arrived (last week) everything was locked up and there was nothing to indicate that tours were available.  So, son James and I went to the main door and rang the door bell.  A nice fellow named Charles Guitard came to the door and said that due to budget reasons, they no longer gave tours, but if I talked to him nicely, he would be glad to show us around.  We accepted his offer.

Charles was the actual operator of the station and seemed to be glad to have something to do.  While there I only saw him and his boss.  There are more people supporting the station, but I didn't see any.

The station is capable of operating on the 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21 MHz broadcast bands.  Charles said they haven't used the 21 MHz band for number of years.  There are seven relatively new Thomson (Thomcast) 250 KW transmitters, three older Harris 100KW transmitters, one new Thomson DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) transmitter.  For more info on DRfM see the Wikipedia page at:  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio_mondiale 

At the end of the wiki article are links to how to modify receivers to receive DRM using a PC.

The transmitters are water cooled.  There is a lot of plumbing, pumps, de-ionizing equipment, and outside heat exchangers to support cooling.

Each transmitter has its own antenna tuner built in, and feeds balanced lines, two air-dielectric coaxes over a foot in diameter with a copper pipe center conductor before transitioning to open-air line in the antenna-switch matrix room.  Charles said the antennas have a maximum VSWR of 1.5:1.  

All antennas seem to be curtain arrays of dipoles supported by 460 foot towers, typically an array of two dipoles wide by four dipoles high by two deep.  I suspect all dipoles are spaced at 1/2 wavelength apart vertically.  The feedlines have a 180 twist between each dipole as they progress vertically.  Charles said they can shift the phase of the feed-lines to the curtain to steer the radiated beam about 15 degrees off bore sight if desired.  

I took a number of photos and hopefully, the Picasa link (tinyurl) at the bottom of this email will work.

Here is a link to the summer broadcast schedule of Radio Canada International.  Sites labeled SAC are this Sackville, New Brunswick station.  The schedule lists frequencies and the areas of the world targeted. Also, the DRM broadcasts are listed.

http://www.rciviva.ca/rci/PDF/2009Summer/RCI-TECH-A09-ENG.pdf  

The station also has broadcasts to northern Quebec in the Inuit language.

The RCI website is:  http://www.rciviva.ca/rci/en/

Here is a link to my photos:

http://tinyurl.com/lfffe5

-Pete, W3GVX