BBC World Service Annual Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast: June 21, 2022

A live, off-air, half-hour recording of the BBC World Service special Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast on 21 June 2022 beginning at 21:30 UTC. The broadcast, hosted by Cerys Matthews, featured messages and music for the 32 members of the staff of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) overwintering in Antarctica at the Rothera (Antarctic Peninsula) and King Edward Point and Bird Island (South Georgia) research stations. In addition to personal messages from family and friends, there were special messages from BAS personnel and others including ones from Sir David Attenborough and Maj. Tim Peake. The transmitter came on the air with a test tone (1108 Hz plus harmonics) about a minute before the program started.

The recording is of the transmission on a frequency of 12065 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 quite good with little noise and fading and good signal strength, which was better than that on the parallel frequencies of 9505 kHz from Woofferton and 7305 kHz from Ascension Island.