HCJB, 1987 (click to enlarge)
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Doug Evans, who shares the following radio memory:
I have been an SWL on and off for the past 30+ years, listening from New York, North Dakota, Texas, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and now from Denver and loving my Tecsun PL-660. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s the SWL waves were full of awesome. It was huge fun to dial up Radio Saigon or Radio Pyongyang and listen to their opinions, in return the USA fired back with Rush Limbaugh on WRNO
Through my early years in SWLing I would always find HCJB in Quito Ecuador “The Voice of the Andes” I loved their shows especially “DX Party Line” but I’d settle for the other programming, “HAM Radio Today”, “The Music of the Andes”, “Tips For Real Living”… I always had a SW radio and a longwire where ever we went and especially on camping trips, and HCJB could always be found.
Job changes caused me to box up my radios for several years, but around 2010 I broke out the radios and found that HCJB was nowhere to be found. The hobby lost a lot of it’s attraction because of that. Not long after that my future wife asked me to drive with her from our home in Denver down to Colorado Springs to visit her relative, her mother’s cousin Tommy. She said he was a missionary in South America and handed me a book he wrote. In the preface he mentioned radio station HCJB.
Her mother’s cousin Tommy lived near the HCJB work headquarters in Colorado springs and I asked him about HCJB, he told me he was an engineer there for over 30 years and spent the afternoon telling me glory days of the largest radio stations on earth, and eventually having to take down the huge antenna farm to make room for the Quito airport. I wish I had taken notes, and I wish I had a chance to meet with him again, but like HCJB Tommy is no longer with us.
What an amazing coincidence it was to meet one of the men who kept HCJB on the air.
What a coincidence indeed! Thanks for sharing your memory, Douglas!
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I have never been much of an evangelical radio listener. However, HCJB was usually on my list of stations to listen in to every now and then. I often found interesting and engaging programming there. If anyone else were to run such a station anywhere in the world, they really should have listened to HCJB. You don’t need to talk as if you’re in church, preaching to the audience 24 hours a day. You can simply discuss everyday things and gently integrate the religion in to it. You’ll win more favor that way than by yelling about fire and brimstone.
I wish there were more stations in the world like HCJB. The always seemed to run a class act.