EDXC Conference in Ankara October
2010
by Kaj Bredahl Jørgensen
The annual EDXC meeting and conference was held on September
30th to October 2nd 2010 in Ankara and sponsored by TRT, the
Voice of Turkey.
Together with my wife I had the great pleasure to
participate this annual event also this year. Unfortunately
our Chairman, Anker Petersen could not attend this year due to
an eye operation, so I was the only Danish delegate this year.
We left Copenhagen airport in the middle of night, by an
airplane directly to Ankara, where we arrived early Thursday
morning. We took a shuttle bus from the airport in Ankara to
the center of the city, and then a taxi to hotel Dedeman,
which was the headquarters for the conference. This hotel is a
five star international hotel with many facilities. In the
lobby, EDXC Secretary Tibor Szilagyi greeted us, and after
having our room, we had a nice breakfast together with him at
hotel’s restaurant.
At 1200, the registration in the hotel was opened, where Tibor
and I sat in the lobby and registered to participants. A few
of those had already arrived on Wednesday. During the
afternoon most of the participants arrived.
In all 19 people from 9 countries participated. As usual the
biggest delegation came from Finland with 7 participants, 2
from Japan, and then just one from Sweden, France, Italy,
Russia, Germany, Denmark and the United Kingdom. By the way,
most of those were DSWCI members!
In the evening we had the usual informal get-to-gather in the
hotel, where many issues were discussed together with a beer
or two.
Friday, October 1st:
At 0900 we left our hotel to drive to TRT, The Voice of Turkey’s
headquarter, situated about 45 minutes drive from our hotel,
all depending on how heavy the traffic is, and it is heavy in
Ankara, so we were a little delayed. When we came to the big
headquarter, we saw a big poster in the lobby made especially
for the EDXC conference by TRT.
(The big poster at the entrance of TRT)
There we were welcomed by, Mr. Mahmut Filiz,
deputy director and Mrs. Ufuk Gecim, head of the German
section as well as several other persons employed by the radio
station. First we went through the domestic department, where
we saw a little exhibition of old radio and TV equipment which
has been used by TRT during the years.
( Entrance to the foreign service of TRT)
Afterwards we went to the office of Mr.
Süleyman Köksoy, General Director of External Service, Voice
of Turkey, who by an interpreter welcomed us and he then told
us briefly about the organization and the radio. There are
4.000 employees in the headquarters, and 3.000 employees in
the different regions throughout the country, so quite a big
organization. We were also told, that two new languages will
be added in the near future for their foreign services, being
Japanese and Mongolian. Then we presented ourselves each other,
and we was handled a package with many different items from
the radio.
Afterwards we walked through many long
corridors to the international department, where we first saw
some of the many different language offices. The Voice of
Turkey is currently broadcasting in 32 different languages.
After the meeting we went to the big IT
section, where we saw the production of the various language
sections was made for the internet. In this department no more
than 140 men and woman were employed to make and up-date news
every day for home page of each language.
After the visit to the IT department, some
of the EDXC participants were interviewed by the radio in
different studios, to be broadcast later on in English, German,
Italian, Russian and French.
Then we had a splendid typical Turkish lunch
at the radio station together with the leading personnel, in
the canteen of the radio, before we went to the Emirlir
transmission site situated about 50 km. outside Ankara. There
we were greeted by the frequency manager, who was a very nice
lady, Mrs.Serife Telliel, and we had a thorough insight of
this rather old, but still well working, transmitter as well
as all the antennas. There was one big routable antenna, 28
(as far as remember) different curtain antennas and some other
different antennas. The reason why we didn’t visit the
Cakirlar transmitter was that this site was under
re-construction.
(The transmitter manager inside the Emirlir transmitter)
During our whole stay at the radio station
and at the transmitter site we were photographed nearly all
the time by a photographer from the radio. I think that we can
see some of the pictures later on their WEB sites – have a
try.
(The power lines to some of the antennas at the Emirlir
transmitter site)
Late in the afternoon we went back to
Ankara, where the traffic again was very heavy, due to the
rush hour, which seems to be the case all day long!
Saturday October 2nd
The conference itself began Saturday morning at 0930 in a big
conference room at the hotel, where also some representatives
from TRT were present. The secretary General, Tibor Szilagyi
opening the conference with this speech
“Dear DX--Friends and Conference
Participants!
12 months have gone since the closure of the EDXC Confernce in
Dublin / Ireland. Let me inform you what happened in the last
12 months, from the EDXC point of view. As you probably know,
the EDXC has today 12 members, 4 observer members and 4
individual members. Two individual members are from Sweden :
the well--known Swedish DX--ers Claes W. Englund and Bengt
Dalhammar, furthermore Torre Ekblom from Finland and Luca Tius
from Italy. During the last 12 months the number of the
members were very stable. Also the membership fees were paid
rather fast at the beginning of the year 2010. We are very
grateful for that, being a small and very poor organization,
operating with penny-- like financial means. During the
preparation work for this Conference I had the pleasure to
enjoy the help of the following organizations and DXClubs
:
1. First of all I had a lot of correspondence with Dr. Ufuk
Gecim --- Head of the German section of the Voice of Turkey,
die Stimme der Tuerkei. At this point I wish to express my
gratitude for her kind help. As you could experience yesterday,
our visit at the Radio was organized very smoothly and we had
an extra-ordinary warm--hearty reception at the Radio. Thank
You Dr. Ufuk Gecim for all the good work you have done for
us!
2. Secondly I would like to mention the great help I got from
Anker Petersen, Chairman of the Danish Shortwave Club
International. He was extremely helpful at finalizing our
programme for this Conference Day today. As you probably know,
Anker Petersen had an eye--operation on the 22nd of September,
and because of that, he cannot attend at this conference. He
was scheduled to give us a lecture here on the subject: "Anker's
Radio Trip to Northern Part of India and Bhutan".
3. Last but not least I wish to express my gratitude to Risto
Vähäkainu, who was always ready to give good advices and
useful recommendations for this conference. We can see it
again - as many, many times before - that the Finnish
Delegation is the biggest one at this conference. You - Finns
- you can be proud of yourselves. Thank you Risto for your
kind support.
4. I also wish to mention that Dario Monferini also showed a
very positive attitude for our conference and he was ready to
contribute to our conference today with his own story:
"2009 Radio Travelling in Russia and other Eastern
European Countries". Thank you Dario very much for that.
Risto Vähäkainu from Finland, Anker Petersen and Kaj Bredahl
Joergensen from Denmark, Dario Monferini from Italy, those are
the people who are always writing to me. All other DX-- Clubs
show a significant silence. Why is that ? We have to discuss
this during our session today: ”The future of the EDXC.
" I still remember the words of Torre Ekblom: ”No
organization is better, than its members.”
After having said this, I wish to mention a few members, who
cannot attend at this conference, but sending their greetings:
AA. Dr. Anton Kuchelmeister from AGDX in Germany is greeting
you all.
BB. I talked to Anker Petersen on Sunday over the phone: He is
greeting you too, wishing us great success at this conference
in Ankara.
On behalf of the EDXC I wish to
express my big THANK You to you all, participating at this
conference.
And with these words I would like to
declare this EDXC Conference 2010 in Ankara as O P E N !!!”
In the connection with the greetings,
Alexander Beryozkin, Russia, had a greeting from (DSWCI Editor)
Dmitry Mezin.
After the welcome, he gave the word to
Mr.Turan Nurettin from TRT External Services, who among other
things told us, that TRT started in 1936 and was reestablish
in 1943. Nowadays they are broadcasting in 32 different
languages with a total of 168 hours in the foreign languages
each day, and 43 hours in Turkish each day. In March 2008 they
added Dari, Pashto, Uzbek, Uyghur and Armenian to their
service. They have 30 languages on Internet for the time being.
In the near future they will also use DRM broadcast to their
service. At the moment they got about 2.500 reception reports
a month and 300.000-400.000 entries each week on their WEB
pages.
Then Risto Vähäkainu, Finland told about
“EDXC conferences – past, present and future” giving a
very good picture of the EDXC history and the background for
founding the EDXC, which took place at Ankers home. He also
briefly mentioned the next conference in 2010, where four
possibilities came up: Bulgaria, Lithuania, Sweden and
Washington DC, USA. More about this later in my article.
The next speaker was Toshimichi Ohtake,
Japan who had a lecture about “Japanese Radio World” seen
from the Japanese point of view. Toshi also showed two slides,
the first about “Good Happenings” in the world of
shortwave radio, and the second about “Bad Happenings”. It
was quite interesting and suggestive.
The third and last speaker was Dario
Monferini, Italy who told about “2009 Radio Travelling in
Russia and other Eastern European countries”, with visits in
St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Samara, Yalta and Kiev, to
mentioning a few destinations, and where he also visited some
Russian DX-ers, and was DX-ing in various places on his trip.
In the afternoon we all went on a guided
sightseeing tour with an English speaking guide to the Kemal
Atatürk museum and mausoleum in the center of Ankara.
Atatürk is the founder of the modern Turkey, and is still
honored with great respect all over Turkey. The museum and
mausoleum is situated in a huge park on about 700.000 square
meters, and is a part of the Turkish armed forces belongings,
thus we saw soldiers many places in the park as well guards at
the mausoleum. Before we enter the area we all had to be
security checked – just as in the airport - and so did all
the vehicles, where soldiers with mirrors on sticks inspected
the cars underneath.
After the visit to the Kemal Atatürks
museum, we went to the old part of Ankara situated in the very
center of Ankara, on a high hill, inside an ancient castle
area surrounded by a tall wall. Here the life was completely
different, than in the rest of AnDSWCI Short Wave News –
October 2010 kara, with very old houses and narrow streets. It
was a big contract to the rest of the city, but quite
interesting to have a look of this part of Ankara.
Then we drove back to hotel to continue the
conference, with the subject “The future of EDXC”. Tibor
started to say that he went to the Swedish DX Federation
Annual General meeting earlier this year to make some PR for
the EDXC, and to ask if there was a Swedish club that could
organize an EDXC conference, but no club was interested. Tibor
would then contact World Wide DX Club in Bad Homburg if they
could arrange a EDXC meeting in the future. It was agreed by
Tibor and Risto, that if the meeting should be held in Germany,
it should not be such technical as it was in 2003 in
Königstein. The future meetings should be mixtures of
lectures, debates and cultural sightseeing’s, as it has been
the case for the last many years now.
Then Risto again raised the four
possibilities for the meeting next year, being, Bulgaria,
Lithuania, Sweden and Washington DC and told. He then raised
the advantages and disadvantages for each country.
Vilnius in Lithuania was the
preferred place, because Risto has some good contacts over
there, and this gives us a possibility to see the Sitkunai
Transmitter Site and the Vilnius TV Tower and it is right now
20 years from the tragic events that took place there. Bulgaria had also its advantages;
our club has some good contacts with our two Bulgarian members
employed at radio Bulgaria. Pertti Hyvönen, Finland has a
summer cottage in Bulgaria, so the meeting could be close to
his home there. However there were also some disadvantages,
such as the distance to Sofia, and the accommodation there. Sweden
was out of the picture as written above, and Washington D.C.
was no good either because of the long distance to the EDXC,
despite that we are all very sure that Radio Free Asia and A.J.
will make a very pleasant stay for us over there.
A working group by Tibor, Risto and Arto was
then arranged, in order to work for the possibilities as
Vilnius for the meeting next year. There were some discussions
of the date for the next meeting, but the solution was June
11-13 which is during the Whitsun.
Tibor then told about the lack of attendance
in this year’s conference compared with last year in Dublin,
where there were 48 participants. He was afraid that the
distance to Ankara was too long for many interested, so he
would try to have the meetings one year in the East and one
year in the West of Europe.
Tibor was also sorry for the lack of
response from the member clubs. It was decided that we should
have more activity on our WEB page with the latest news, which
should be really news, and not just “old stories” that
already was published within the DX Community. So member clubs
should be forced to come with their input to the WEB page.
After a fruitful meeting, we had about an
hour before all participants and two representatives from TRT
went to the traditional but very tasteful Banquet Dinner at
the hotel.
At the end of the banquet Tibor officially
shortly closed this year’s conference and gave the word
further to Risto, who was telling some funny stories mainly
about his travelling around the world, and said that what he
has seen those four days in Turkey, he fully would agree that
Turkey should join the European Union. George Brown thanked
TRT for their hospitality and so did I, saying that if TRT
would continue with that speed of increasing languages in
their foreign services, in a few years time they will be
bigger and having more languages than Radio Japan and
BBC!
Thank you very much to the Voice of Turkey’s
great hospitality during our stay in Ankara. I will surely
remember those days in Ankara with great joy
– KBJ.
|
