MY UNEXPECTED VISIT TO AIR PORT BLAIR

Last week I was on a holiday tour with my family and we went to Andaman & Nicobar Island to spend our vacation in the lovely Beaches of the Island. We were staying in a hotel in Port Blair the capital City of A & N Islands and least to my expectation I saw a FM tower on a hill top, I was quiet excited to know what was it all about so in my curiosity I asked my tour guy about it and he told me that the tower is for AIR Port Blair Studio & Office at Dilanipur. I asked him to take me there and it was only about 2 km ride as we reached there but I was not allowed in due to security reasons. All this happened on the first day of our trip. I told my tour guy about my interest in Radio listening so he promised me that he will manage an entry as he had some connections with ex-AIR Port Blair

staff. I went back to the hotel and called my friend Sudipta in Kolkata and told him about my experience. Next day Alokesh called me and he told that he has heard about my visit to AIR Port Blair from Sudipta and contact Jose Jacob (VU2JOS) and asked him that if he had any contact, like wise Jose had a friend  who now works in AIR Calicut he worked in AIR Port Blair once. Who gave contacts of  Asst. Engineer working in AIR Port Blair. All preparation done and I was waiting to call at AIR Port Blair now six days passed and it was 24^th December 2012 we had our flight at 1405 hrs and had to report at the airport at 1200 hrs. In the morning I had my breakfast and called at AIR Port Blair Studio and fixed an appointment at 1100 hrs. I was very excited to finally get a visit. We kept out luggage in the Hotel lobby after checking out and went to AIR with my family. We did an entry in the security room and as we entered we were received by the man himself. Many things were running in my mind as I have visited AIR transmitter Site at Aligarh and AIR Kolkata Transmitter site at Amtala and had some pictures in my mind but this was a Studio. I asked him whether my family members can come with me he agreed. We went in and he took us to the Control Room first and introduced us to the Control Room Engineer and other staff. I thought this was it now I will be asked to leave because of all the security reasons and privacy but no, things ware different he started 

explaining the whole thing starting from the equipments to the arrangements and the different studio layout and the full layout of the plot. He showed how the equipments in the control room works how each of the studios programs are fed to the control room and then it is sent to the transmitter site at Brookshabad located about 17 kms from Dilanipur. He then took us to the composing room where the program are composed or edited  then to the Talk Studio and showed us how each of the studio are signaled that they are on air. 
 Then he took us to the Drama Studio where he told my son to record something so that he can show us how the voices are edited or how the whole recording is done. Then to the Music Studio & the News Studio. He even showed us the equipment for FM transmission which was a 10 kW Nautel 10 NARFO36  transmitter operating on 100.9 MHz FM. This carries Vividh Bharati programs. He also showed us the power supply and the Generator room then the centralized AC unit. When I asked him that who deals with reception reports from listeners, he told me that the guy who deals with it is absent because of Christmas. Then we bid farewell and left. Though I was not allowed to click any pictures but my experience was memorable.

The current SW schedule of AIR Port Blair is:

Morning:

2355 hrs to 0300 hrs UTC on 4760 kHz

0315 hrs to 0400 hrs UTC (Sat 0415 hrs, Sun 0500 hrs)  on 7390 kHz

Afternoon:

0700 hrs to 0900 hrs UTC (Sun 1000 hrs) 7390 kHz

Evening and night:

1030 hrs to 1700 hrs UTC on 4760 kHz.

Address: Station Engineer,

                All India Radio Port Blair,

                Dilanipur, Haddo PO,

                Port Blair 744102,

                Andaman & Nicobar,

                India.