BBC World Service Annual Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast: June 21, 2021

Midday at Rothera Research Station in midwinter. Credit: Klara Weaver, Rothera Research Station.

A live, off-air, half-hour recording of the BBC World Service special Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast on 21 June 2021 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 accompanied by a blackbird. The transmitter had a "crash start" and the first two words of the introductory announcement ("This is") were cut.

The recording is of the transmission on a frequency of 7305 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 and reasonable signal strength, which was better than that on the parallel frequencies of 9505 kHz from Woofferton and 6170 kHz from Ascension Island. A fourth frequency, 6035 kHz, transmitted from Dhabbaya, United Arab Emirates, was not heard. At the very end of the program, there is some slight adjacent frequency interference.