WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News

(R BULGARIA DX MIX News, Ivo Ivanov, via wwdxc BC-DX Dec 5)
MADAGASCAR RADIO NETHERLANDS - MADAGASCAR RELAY STATION.
RNW Relay Station in Madagascar.
The Radio Netherlands relay station is situated with in a few miles from
the island's capital Antananarivo. The main objective of the relay station
is to improve the reception conditions in a number of listening target
areas. The great congestion of shortwave transmitters in the International
SW broadcasting bands makes it necessary for the stations which want to be
heard should make use of strong transmitters in appropriate locations. The
Madagascar relay station is used to serve the countries of Africa, the
Indian Sub continent, the Middle East and South East Asia as well as
Indonesia and Western Australia.
All these areas are within a radius of 10,000 kilometres and can be
reached quite well from Madagascar on shortwave throughout the entire
year.
Radio Netherlands' negotiations with the Malagasy Government were
successfully concluded in 1967 and the official go-ahead from the Royal
Nederland Government were received a year later.
The relay station is situated some 20 kilometres northeast of Antananarivo
and is equipped with the most modern material. There are two digital
controlled Philips shortwave transmitters with a carrier power of 300
kilowatts each. These transmitters are being used as much as possible to
broadcast two programmes // during 17 hours per day. But as per the latest
information in World Radio TV Handbook this relay station has been
upgraded few times in the past few years and now consists of 6 shortwave
transmitters including 2 x 50 KW, 1 x 250 KW and 3 x 350 KW units. Radio
Netherlands also carry a number of relay services for other stations such
as Deutsche Welle, Radio Sweden and Radio Canada International on an
exchange basis. The Madagascar relay station also avails air time to
clandestine broadcasters such as Voice of Tibet beaming towards the
Tibetan exiles in India, Voice of the People targeting the Zimbabweans,
Radio Nile [now suspended] aiming the Sudanese population and Democratic
Voice of Burma beaming towards the democratic aspirators in Myanmar.
The Madagascar relay station consists of 13 antennas, eleven of which are
three band antennas and designed to transmit in the three adjacent
shortwave bands. These antennas consist of self-supporting towers between
which an array of horizontal dipoles has been erected. Depending on the
main directions of radiation required, a ground reflector network or a
second dipole array has been built behind this first network. The height
of such a shortwave antenna depends on the wavelength used. For the lower
frequency bands antennas of about 110 meters high have been built in
Madagascar. In order to further increase the efficiency of the antennas a
system is used whereby the main direction of radiation can be varied over
a azimuth of 15 degrees to the left or to the right of the nominal
direction. This horizontal beam slewing is a technical refinement in
antenna techniques. The antenna site has been designed and developed by
Brown Boveri.
The connection between the relay station and the studios in Hilversum in
the Netherlands is effected by means of telecommunication satellite of the
Intelsat system.
The Madagascar relay station has started its test transmission in 1971 and
in the beginning operated mainly by Dutch engineers. Nowadays all staff
except one are all Malagasy people, trained and qualified to solve every
problem in the technical and operational field.
Radio Netherlands Madagascar station verifies reception reports on the
relay broadcasts with a large full data folder QSL for reports mailed