ARLA/CLUSTER: 20 de Abril - Dia Internacional de Marconi

[João Gonçalves Costa]

Caister to echo to sound of Morse code again

Norfolk's radio hams will once again be trying to contact other amateurs around the world from Caister on Saturday 20 April 2013 as part of
the International Marconi Day celebrations.

The Norfolk Amateur Radio Club (NARC) will be running an all-day special event station with the callsign GB0CMS at Caister Lifeboat Visitor Centre to commemorate the village's original Marconi Wireless Station, which was established at Caister in 1900. The station was in a house in the High Street known as Pretoria Villa and its original purpose was to communicate with ships in the North Sea and the Cross Sand lightship.

Last year the radio amateurs managed to contact more than 480 other radio amateurs in 40 different countries.

Using a mixture of Morse code and speech, notable contacts included hams in Australia, Barbados, Newfoundland, Canada and the USA. Other contacts included special Marconi stations in the UK, Italy, Austria and Iceland.

Contacts closer to home included many other radio amateurs around the UK, including some of the other Marconi stations in Holyhead, Daventry and The Lizard in Cornwall - home to some of the inventor's early work.

On this day, the closest Saturday to Guglielmo Marconi's birthday, stations around the world are set up at sites with historical links to the inventor's work. These include Poldhu in England; Cape Cod Massachusetts; Glace Bay, Nova Scotia; Villa Griffone, Bologna, Italy and many others.

Once again, radio amateurs around the world will try to contact as many of these stations as possible to win an award, in this the 26 th year that International Marconi Day has been run.

NARC aim to run two stations at the Caister Lifeboat Visitor Centre - one using speech (telephony) and the other Morse code (telegraphy). Any radio amateur making contact with either station can request a special "QSL" card with a photograph of the original Caister Marconi Wireless Station on the front.

NARC public relation officer Steve Nichols, who is organising the event, said: "Any visitors will be made more than welcome. In addition to the radio stations the Visitor Centre will also be open, which offers a fascinating insight into the remarkable history of Caister Lifeboat."


Further history of the original Marconi Wireless Station:

The Caister station was connected by land line to Gt Yarmouth Post Office and the Caister Coast Guard Station. The main aerial mast behind the house was 150 feet high, the aerial wire being suspended between this and a slightly shorter mast situated on land where Lacon Road was later built.

The large front room of the house contained the main apparatus and was also used as the operating room. The engine for charging the accumulators was situated in a shed adjoining the house and the accumulators themselves were housed in a specially-constructed annex.

The remainder of the premises were used as a dwelling house for the officer-in-charge.

The range of communication was 150 to 200 miles on the long wave (600m) and 100 miles on the short wave (300m).

In 1909 all the Marconi coastal stations were taken over by the Post Office. In 1911 the Caister station was used to train lightship men in the use of telegraphy equipment.

In January 1915 the telegraph equipment on the Cross Sand lightship was transferred to the Parlour lightship and the Caister station was changed to 'general working' and not used for ship-to-shore work. Public use of the telegram facility provided at Caister was suspended for the duration of the WW1.

In 1921 plans were made for the reinstallation of wireless on Trinity House lightships, but this time the new wireless telephony was to replace telegraphy (Morse). New technology made the Caister station out of date and it finally closed in 1929. The masts were taken down and a few years later the house became the village Police Station.

(Historical details with thanks to local historian Colin Tooke.)
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