Halifax Trip, Day One: Radio Canada International
As I write this I’m lounging in a hotel room on my last night of a two-night, three-day professional development trip. There are about sixty of us on this trip; military and civilian. This is the first time in the six years I’ve been working at the Signal Squadron that they’ve planned anything this involved that includes so many of us. I don’t think I’m the only one here that hopes they do this again in the future. It’s been a busy trip with some tight scheduling, but every minute is packed with fun, learning, and camaraderie.
Our first whistle stop on day one of the trip was Sackville, New Brunswick. If you drive between the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on the Trans Canada Highway it’s hard not to notice these giant towers with webs of cables strung between them. I admit that more than once I’ve wondered what exactly they were for; nets to trap our giant mosquitoes perhaps? Actually they’re transmissions lines, currently sending out short-wave radio signals to Europe, the USA, and even Cuba. We got to tour the Radio Canada International facility and learn more about the technology behind the big nets.
Transmission antennas. These are stacked dipole towers.
The switches behind this safety cage connect and disconnect the transmission lines.
This board offers a visual display of the antenna grid.
Here's an amplifier inside one of the transmitters.
Someone's hand through an infrared camera.
Fun facts:
- The monthly power bill for this place is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Three of the transmitters date back 1985, one of which is still in service daily.
- The station sells it’s transmission services abroad, and it’s commercial income provides for almost all of the operating costs.
Whew, that was just the first stop on day one! Coming up next: a very interactive motivational speaker, and a dinner theatre!
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2 Comments on “Halifax Trip, Day One: Radio Canada International”
I liked the way the international community came together to save RCI when the CBC was thinking about shutting it down. Now, the CBC would be insane to shut down this service which generates revenue, even if that revenue just means it costs them nothing. You just can’t buy this kind of international advertising and PR such as we’re getting for the money CBC spends here. With one hop off the ionosphere, they can transmit to anywhere on the planet. It is pretty cool to think a kid with a wind-up radio in a remote village in Tanzania might be listening to CBC broadcasting.