By Yasmin Assemi

Dixon -- A few miles outside Dixon's core lies the old Voice of America
radio station nestled among a web of communication wires.

For more than 40 years, it broadcast in short-wave in 44 different languages
to the Far East, Central America, South America's West Coast and Oceania.
The typical program was a mix of news, sports, music and cultural
information about the U.S. gathered at VOA's headquarters in Washington,
D.C.

It was an institution believed in by John Wiswell and Frank Green, the two
surviving Dixon residents who worked there.

The station in Dixon and its nationwide counterparts educated people
worldwide about America and "let them know what kind of country we were,"
said Green, a station radio engineer and plant supervisor from 1953 to 1986.

"If (the rest of the world) knew everything about us, we'd be in a better
shape than we are now," the 84-year-old said.

It was "kind of a high-pressure job," but Green, a Pearl Harbor survivor,
found it interesting work after serving in the Navy during World War II, he
said.

"I believe what they were doing was right, and I thought it was pretty
wonderful for the government to want them to know what was going on here,"
Green said.

Wiswell came to Dixon in 1979 and worked for VOA for about a year as a
technician. He shares Green's mentality.

"A lot of these foreign countries (didn't know) what Americans were like,"
Wiswell, 80, said. "It gave the public - the ones who could listen to it -
an idea of what (America) was about."

The station hosted contests for listeners and some programs featured
announcers who spoke slowly for those who couldn't understand English well.

Russia and other countries often tried to jam programs to prevent people
from listening but stopped once the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Green said.

"It used to be information was not quite as easy to send to bigger
countries," Green said. "A lot of countries had their propaganda, but ours
was pretty straight."

"They did a lot of good stuff," Wiswell said. "It was not so much propaganda
like some of the others. It was factual stuff."

"The main thing was to do the job out there, and if we had problems with the
transmitters we had to immediately notify Washington," Green said.

Dixon's station was one of four in California and went on the air under the
leadership of NBC in 1944. The government took it over in 1949 and broadcast
until the station closed in 1989.

"They wanted a place on the West Coast that was pretty good for transmission
(and Dixon was the) ideal spot to have a short-wave transmitting station,"
Green said.

Voice of America operated under the U.S. Information Agency, which was
created in 1942 after Pearl Harbor "to deal with Nazi and Japanese
propaganda," VOA spokesperson Joseph O'Connell said.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors operated VOA after the State Department
absorbed USIA in 1999. The agency now broadcasts under a charter which
requires content to be comprehensive and objective, O'Connell said.

Only two VOA transmitting facilities still broadcast from the U.S. - one in
Delano and the other in Greenville, N.C. Wiswell blamed satellites for
putting Dixon's station out of business.

"The viewpoint changes from time to time," Green said. "I think now a lot of
people feel the United States is very rich and helps out more and if we
don't, they don't like us."

State Department officials said there are no records of the government's
monetary investment in Dixon's station over the years. A 1977 document
obtained by the Daily Republic states the U.S. government had an overall
investment of $7 million in the facility.

Green, a matter-of-fact man of few words, gives a good summary of the
station's popularity.

"If people like us, they like it," Green said. "If they don't, they don't
like it."

People can still listen to VOAs short-wave broadcasts. For more information,
visit www.voa.gov.

Reach Yasmin Assemi at 427-6953 or .

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/article...news/news1.txt

I had totally forgotten about the Dixon site. THANKS for the reminder. Use
to listen to it from Concord, Ca. When I lived in Fairfield/Suisun City,
tried to find it but couldn't. Any ideas if it's still standing and where?
(Lat/Long, address, etc.?)

Boy, does VOA bring back memories. THANKS again!!! Eric KA6USJ

"Eric Ferguson" wrote in message
...
I had totally forgotten about the Dixon site. THANKS for the reminder. Use
to listen to it from Concord, Ca. When I lived in Fairfield/Suisun City,
tried to find it but couldn't. Any ideas if it's still standing and where?
(Lat/Long, address, etc.?)

Boy, does VOA bring back memories. THANKS again!!! Eric KA6USJ



I miss the VOA's announcement of the transmitter location and language.

Frank Dresser

Eric Ferguson wrote:
I had totally forgotten about the Dixon site. THANKS for the reminder. Use
to listen to it from Concord, Ca. When I lived in Fairfield/Suisun City,
tried to find it but couldn't. Any ideas if it's still standing and where?
(Lat/Long, address, etc.?)

Dunno if it's still standing, but it used to be bisected by Highway 113
about 10 miles south of town. Towers and poles all around, wires
stretched out like a streetcar yard.

MT,

The old VOA Dixon Site is now owned {Leased} by Globe Wireless.
http://www.globewireless.com/
Coordinates: 121.45W & 38.23N

Large Navy Antenna Farm in N. California
http://lists.contesting.com/archives.../msg00609.html

NOTE: In 2001 there were "Rumors" of that a 'super antenna array'
[HAARP] was installed near the Dixon area.

THE GLOBE WIRELESS NETWORK
- by Ary Boender - from Worldwide Utility News (WUN)
Globe Wireless at Dixon, CA.
http://www.wunclub.com/wunstr/wunstr9604.html
ABOUT - Globe Wireless at Dixon, CA.
Dixon Transmit Site Globe Wireless has acquired a radio transmitting
location previously used by the VOICE OF AMERICA. The former DIXON
RELAY STATION, located eight miles Southeast of Dixon, California,
will be used to connect vessels in the Pacific Ocean with land based
electronic mail systems, including the Internet. The history of the
Dixon Relay Station goes back more than fifty years. Construction
began for the radio transmitting facility at the 640 acre Dixon site
in 1943. The Voice of America used the Dixon location, starting in
1944, to broadcast information and entertainment to short- wave radio
listeners in Asia and the Pacific. Until 1963, the NATIONAL
BROADCASTING COMPANY (NBC) operated the site under contract to the US
Government. Transmissions from the Dixon Relay Station ceased in 1983.
The VOA used three COLLINS 250 kilowatt transmitters and two GENERAL
ELECTRIC 100 kilowatt transmitters when the facility was operational.
Still remaining on the site are two massive dipole curtain arrays and
ten rhombic antennas, most still in operating condition. Skeletons of
the GE and Collins transmitters also remain. Globe Wireless plans to
install transmitters and antennas for its maritime public coast
station KFS at the new site. The current KFS transmitter location, in
Palo Alto, California, will be phased out of operation over the next
few years. According to company officials, Globe Wireless may also
relocate the transmitters for public coast station KPH to the new
Dixon location. Transfer of that station's license to Globe Wireless
from MCI INTER- NATIONAL is pending FCC approval. The MCI station
currently transmits from Bolinas, California. AERONAUTICAL RADIO, INC.
(ARINC) will sub-lease space at the Dixon site from Globe Wireless.
ARINC is installing transmitters to communicate with the flight crews
of aircraft flying over the Pacific Ocean and South America.

jm2cw ~ RHF
..
..
= = = "Mike Terry" wrote in message
= = = ...
By Yasmin Assemi

Dixon -- A few miles outside Dixon's core lies the old Voice of America
radio station nestled among a web of communication wires.

For more than 40 years, it broadcast in short-wave in 44 different languages
to the Far East, Central America, South America's West Coast and Oceania.
The typical program was a mix of news, sports, music and cultural
information about the U.S. gathered at VOA's headquarters in Washington,
D.C.

It was an institution believed in by John Wiswell and Frank Green, the two
surviving Dixon residents who worked there.

The station in Dixon and its nationwide counterparts educated people
worldwide about America and "let them know what kind of country we were,"
said Green, a station radio engineer and plant supervisor from 1953 to 1986.

"If (the rest of the world) knew everything about us, we'd be in a better
shape than we are now," the 84-year-old said.

It was "kind of a high-pressure job," but Green, a Pearl Harbor survivor,
found it interesting work after serving in the Navy during World War II, he
said.

"I believe what they were doing was right, and I thought it was pretty
wonderful for the government to want them to know what was going on here,"
Green said.

Wiswell came to Dixon in 1979 and worked for VOA for about a year as a
technician. He shares Green's mentality.

"A lot of these foreign countries (didn't know) what Americans were like,"
Wiswell, 80, said. "It gave the public - the ones who could listen to it -
an idea of what (America) was about."

The station hosted contests for listeners and some programs featured
announcers who spoke slowly for those who couldn't understand English well.

Russia and other countries often tried to jam programs to prevent people
from listening but stopped once the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Green said.

"It used to be information was not quite as easy to send to bigger
countries," Green said. "A lot of countries had their propaganda, but ours
was pretty straight."

"They did a lot of good stuff," Wiswell said. "It was not so much propaganda
like some of the others. It was factual stuff."

"The main thing was to do the job out there, and if we had problems with the
transmitters we had to immediately notify Washington," Green said.

Dixon's station was one of four in California and went on the air under the
leadership of NBC in 1944. The government took it over in 1949 and broadcast
until the station closed in 1989.

"They wanted a place on the West Coast that was pretty good for transmission
(and Dixon was the) ideal spot to have a short-wave transmitting station,"
Green said.

Voice of America operated under the U.S. Information Agency, which was
created in 1942 after Pearl Harbor "to deal with Nazi and Japanese
propaganda," VOA spokesperson Joseph O'Connell said.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors operated VOA after the State Department
absorbed USIA in 1999. The agency now broadcasts under a charter which
requires content to be comprehensive and objective, O'Connell said.

Only two VOA transmitting facilities still broadcast from the U.S. - one in
Delano and the other in Greenville, N.C. Wiswell blamed satellites for
putting Dixon's station out of business.

"The viewpoint changes from time to time," Green said. "I think now a lot of
people feel the United States is very rich and helps out more and if we
don't, they don't like us."

State Department officials said there are no records of the government's
monetary investment in Dixon's station over the years. A 1977 document
obtained by the Daily Republic states the U.S. government had an overall
investment of $7 million in the facility.

Green, a matter-of-fact man of few words, gives a good summary of the
station's popularity.

"If people like us, they like it," Green said. "If they don't, they don't
like it."

People can still listen to VOAs short-wave broadcasts. For more information,
visit www.voa.gov.

Reach Yasmin Assemi at 427-6953 or .

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/article...news/news1.txt
..

Frank Dresser wrote:

"Eric Ferguson" wrote in message
...
I had totally forgotten about the Dixon site. THANKS for the reminder. Use
to listen to it from Concord, Ca. When I lived in Fairfield/Suisun City,
tried to find it but couldn't. Any ideas if it's still standing and where?
(Lat/Long, address, etc.?)

Boy, does VOA bring back memories. THANKS again!!! Eric KA6USJ



I miss the VOA's announcement of the transmitter location and language.

Yeah, that was always nice.

dxAce
Michigan
USA

I went to high school in Vacaville. The mysterious red blinking beacons on
the towers were visible from my bedroom window at night.

Romance has been drained from radio.

Norm Lehfeldt

"Frank Dresser" wrotf:


"Eric Ferguson" wrote in message
...
I had totally forgotten about the Dixon site. THANKS for the reminder. Use
to listen to it from Concord, Ca. When I lived in Fairfield/Suisun City,
tried to find it but couldn't. Any ideas if it's still standing and where?
(Lat/Long, address, etc.?)

Boy, does VOA bring back memories. THANKS again!!! Eric KA6USJ



I miss the VOA's announcement of the transmitter location and language.

Frank Dresser

On 16 Oct 2004 06:37:27 GMT, norml wrote:

I went to high school in Vacaville. The mysterious red blinking beacons on
the towers were visible from my bedroom window at night.

Romance has been drained from radio.

Norm Lehfeldt

"Frank Dresser" wrotf:


"Eric Ferguson" wrote in message
...
I had totally forgotten about the Dixon site. THANKS for the reminder. Use
to listen to it from Concord, Ca. When I lived in Fairfield/Suisun City,
tried to find it but couldn't. Any ideas if it's still standing and where?
(Lat/Long, address, etc.?)

Boy, does VOA bring back memories. THANKS again!!! Eric KA6USJ



I miss the VOA's announcement of the transmitter location and language.

Frank Dresser


I went to school in Woodland, about 20 miles north of Dixon. Had the
fortunate opportunity to visit the Dixon VOA transmitter site (this
was in 1970). Our physics teacher had connections, I guess.
I was sorry when VOA closed it down.

Totally forgot to say *Thank You* to Eric Weaver and RHF for the
coordinates. Now I have to find an excuse for roamin' the "Bay Area
Backroads" (bay area TV show). Actually don't need an excuse, but it makes a
good one G......Thanks, Eric

Just go south on California State Highway 113 off of Interstate 80. Enjoy!!!