WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News

steel was corroded. You should be able to locate the two masts at this
site on Google Earth. They are in a place called Whitireia Park,in the
Porirua suburb of Titahi Bay. There are two masts, each with a shack at
the base, and one larger (now disused?) BCNZ building.
(where RNZI's SW TXer would have been located - Ian Baxter).
The following edited New Zealand information came via a Kiwi friend.
I have a few things to add to this item in Bulletin #785.
The mast that was felled last year [2005] was the second tallest at the
site and was 400 feet (about 122 metres) tall. It has been replaced with a
new mast that is 500 feet in height.
There is a third, shorter MW mast there, about 200 feet tall, but I'm not
sure of its actual height.
The tallest mast at Titahi Bay is about 712 feet tall. It replaced an
earlier mast of the same height about 20 years ago that was being corroded
by salt spray blown in from the Tasman Sea, which is only a few hundred
metres away. It is a windy location with the strong, predominant
westerlies being funnelled between the mountain ranges of the North and
South Islands through Cook Strait much of the time.
You are correct in assuming that some of the shortwave antennas were
located just North-East of the main transmitter building. They were those
beamed at 30 degrees to the Pacific. They were stacked dipoles and
reflectors and there was an antenna designed for each frequency band of 6,
9, 11, 15 & 17 Mhz. They were fairly basic and had about 5 to 8 db gain.
The Antennas beamed to Australia were located on the ridge of a small hill
a few hundred metres South East of the transmitter building. They were a
replica of the Pacific beam and were aimed at 285 degrees.
There was a third shortwave antenna, a wide bandwidth " Vee" aimed South
to New Zealand's "Scott Base" in Antarctica. It was used from the late
1950's to (I think) the late 1960's. The "sharp" end was mounted on a high
pole attached to the transmitter building and each leg had a terminating
resistor a few hundred feet away. The area where it was is now a housing
estate. The transmissions to Scott Base "Calling Antarctica" consisted of
messages from families at home to those working there and went out on
Sunday evenings (local time) from 0815-0845 UTC.
One of the two 7.5 kw transmitters has been kept at the site as a museum
piece. They went out of service in 1990 when the new 100 kw RNZI unit at
Rangitaiki began transmission.
The main transmitter building is still very much in use, as all of the MW
transmitters are housed in it. Also it is used to store the large library
of 33 & 45 rpm discs that Radio N.Z. accumulated over the years and are
hardly ever needed in the age of CDs'.
The shacks at the base of each mast house the antenna coupling units that
deliver the power from the transmission lines to the antennas.
The site is owned by RNZ, as are all of the main AM transmitter sites in
the country.
When the site was built in the 1930's, it was considered to be a quite
remote location and houses were built there for the staff. Now urban
sprawl has spread and it is just another Wellington suburb.
Yep, the Google Earth simulation looks pretty right to me.
There was a real problem with the 285 degrees antenna when 6 MHz was used.
It was aimed through nearby "new" houses causing severe interference to TV
reception and you can guess the end result! That is why RNZI is at
Rangitaiki which is in "the middle of nowhere"! No neighbours!