Saturday, January 04, 2020

QSL: Voice of Maldives / Dhivehiraajjeyge adu, Thilafushi 1449

This station was not quite uncommon in the beginning of the century. I heard it a few times at their sign-on which I believe was at 00:25Z. The past couple of years however, they haven't had a MW service for their total area of 90,000 km². Thanks to funding from Japan, a 25-kW transmitter was recently put in service from the island of Thilafushi.

I noted the news about the new transmitter, so I decided to try to catch it. Last night at 01:00 with the 80-degrees beverage I didn't need more than one try. Although interference from BBC and Saudi Arabia, the National Anthem  came out very well, together with a rather weak announcement. The distance is 8031 km.

A Facebook message with a recording of the station ended up with a long chat with one of the producers at the station. Part of the antenna mast is seen below. Thilafushi, 7 km from Male is an artificial island built on coral reefs to dump municipal waste.  Thilafushi is rapidly developing as an industrial island and a new location for warehouses.




















(Sources: MediumWave.Info, Sarath Weerakoon, Raazy Ali)
at (UTC)

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous04 January, 2020 14:36

    Very interesting. Thanks. I look forward to more items.

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  2. Sarath Weerakoon04 January, 2020 16:36

    Excellent ! I am pretty sure, the station would have been delighted to hear from you , all the way from Norway. Voice of Maldives is still conducting teat transmissions. What I gathered from the station is that reception monitoring teams are evaluating reception, particualarly in the northern and southern atolls before the official commissioning of the new Nautel 25 kw transmitter.

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  3. vince99917 February, 2020 10:43

    Nice one..

    I think I heard them on Saturday evening here in South Africa. Am busy compiling a reception report. Who did you email Bjarne?
    Signal was quite good into Cape Town, at 20h00 UTC with some interference from Saudi Arabia. (MW loop helped in nulling them though)

    I have some nice audio clips but obviously the language barrier makes it a tad difficult identifying them.

    73
    Vince Stevens

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  4. Bjarne Mjelde17 February, 2020 12:12

    Vince, I used their Facebook page to post a message.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Bill Harms26 February, 2021 20:39

    That is truly awesome. I listened to the channel several times and hear a station just under Saudi Arabia but no luck getting a positive ID.

    ReplyDelete