Additional discussion of this I believe not yet posted to the group:
Palau - Transmitter History:
Ray Robinson corrected the information about the transmitters and antennas at Medorn, and this is appreciated. The information that the High Adventure station on Palau used HCJB transmitters is not just Kai Ludwig's invention, but found at https://www.swcountry.be/eqa.html. This labour of love was until now thought to be a very authoritative source. https://www.swcountry.be/plw.html gives some information which comes nearer to those of Ray Robinson's, but still maintains, that the transmitters were moved from Pifo to Palau.
There is a pre-history of KHBN which might explain the alleged Pifo connection. In my PhD on international Christian radio (accepted at the University of Erlangen in 1991 and published in 1994), I mention a High Adventure Station planned for East Asia. (Unfortunately, I did not have the computer and internet resources back then, that we have now. I even remember that the first text programme that I used was proprietary software and I had to re-write everything in Word to have my dissertation in a format accepted for publishing.) In my book, I mention that High Adventure started looking for a site in 1986 and came up with the idea to use a ship in the South China Sea. This was planned to have a 50 kW short wave transmitter to begin with. Later they checked Palau for a possible site and the Philippines too and ended on Guam. In 1989/90 the Adventist short wave station KSDA Guam leased out some transmitter time to High Adventure for programmes in English, Chinese and Korean. This was very surprising, but in a letter to me dated 26 January 1990, Allen Steele of AWR Asia, considered this to be a helping hand to a ministry in need, because High Adventure seemed to have everything needed for the station on the island, but "administrative problems" with the construction. Unfortunately, both Adventist World Radio and High Adventure used a "Voice of Hope" identity, which caused some confusion among listeners. So, the inter-denominational co-operation lasted only for some months.
It may be that High Adventure sold the equipment they had on Guam when they abandoned the project or transported it back to the US mainland for use at KVOH.
(Dr Hansjoerg Biener 3 November 2019)
Hi, Dr. Biener. Your information is mostly correct. In 1959/60, RCA built three 100 kW shortwave transmitters (model BHF-100B) in Italy, for installation at Vatican Radio. In the late 1960's, Vatican Radio sold them to HCJB, and they were shipped to Ecuador and installed at Pifo. In 1985, George Otis had obtained a construction permit from the FCC to build KVOH in Rancho Simi, California, and was looking for a suitable transmitter. In the end, he bought the RCA units from HCJB, and had them shipped to Los Angeles. One was installed here for KVOH, and is actually still on the air to this day. The others were kept in their shipping container until the necessary approvals were secured for KHBN on Palau. They were then shipped there, and were installed as KHBN's first transmitters. However, those particular units have long since been scrapped, and have not been part of the complement of transmitters on Palau for many years. Incidentally, under High Adventure, there were only two curtain antennas to begin with. The third was added by World Harvest some years ago. And, since my posting in the WOR group, I have received confirmation that the two Thomson transmitters on Palau were indeed obtained from KSDA. The Harris SW100B may well have come from HCJB as the https://www.swcountry.be/plw.html website indicates, although I have no first-hand knowledge of that. I believe the Continental 418F came from the site near Darwin that was forced to close down some years ago.
When High Adventure was leasing time from KSDA in Guam, it was entirely using KSDA's equipment and antennas. No High Adventure owned transmitter was ever used there, and nothing was ever shipped from KSDA back to KVOH in Los Angeles. Five years ago, KVOH did obtain a Harris SW100 that had previously been installed at KTWR in Guam, but that's a completely different story!
And, incidentally, it is not quite correct to say "the inter-denominational co-operation lasted only for some months". AWR has a registered trademark in the U.S. for the phrase "Voz de Esperanza", which in Spanish means Voice of Hope. They have for many decades produced programs with that name, in both Spanish and English. When High Adventure started using the same name for their broadcasts, but as the name of the station rather than for any particular program, it was with AWR's blessing. High Adventure sold off all their broadcast properties in the early 2000's, but John and Heather Tayloe, founders of Strategic Communications Group, acquired KVOH, Los Angeles in 2013 and resurrected the Voice of Hope name (per the call letters), and subsequently extended it to the network including the stations in Zambia and Israel. Heather is the daughter of High Adventure founder George Otis Sr., who passed away in 2007. Strategic has been very happy to renew our relationship with AWR, and continue to cooperate with them as members of the National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters (NASB). Also, we cooperate in the co-production of the weekly program for shortwave listeners, 'Wavescan', which is a joint project of AWR (Dr. Adrian Petersen), WRMI (Jeff White), KVOH (Ray Robinson) and WWCR (Dr. Jerry Plummer).
Ray.
Ray Robinson
Strategic Communications Group
Voice of Hope World Radio Network
www.voiceofhope.com
(via WOR io group)
