BBC World Service Annual Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast: June 21, 2020

BAS Rothera Research Station is located on Adelaide Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula (BAS PHOTO)

A live, off-air, half-hour recording of the BBC World Service special Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast on 21 June 2020 beginning at 21:30 UTC. The broadcast, hosted by Cerys Matthews, featured messages and music for the staff of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) overwintering in Antarctica. In addition to personal messages from family and friends, there were special messages from BAS personnel and others including one from Sir David Attenborough. The broadcast was preceded by an approximately 1100-Hz test tone.

The recording is of the transmission on a frequency of 7360 kHz from the BBC's Woofferton, England, transmitting station (300 kW rated transmitter power, antenna beam 182 degrees). The transmission was received on a Tecsun PL-880 receiver with a Tecsun AN-03L 7-metre wire antenna outdoors in Hanwell (just outside Fredericton), New Brunswick, Canada, in AM mode with 2.3 kHz RF filtering. Reception was fairly good with little noise and fading but signal strength was not very strong although much better than that on the parallel frequencies of 5790 kHz from Woofferton and 9580 kHz from Ascension Island.