Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine March 2017 - 24

Coltano: The Forgotten Story of Marconi's Early Powerful Intercontinental Station
technical description. From late 1929 to
the early 1930s, vacuum-tube transmit
equipments were installed in Coltano
for both oceanic and coastal service (see
Table 1 for the band designations).
C The two main transmitters were supplied by Marconi Wireless Co. London
and operated in the 15-50 m band with
14 kW output power; they were used
for long-range service on the following
frequencies: 6650 kHz (45.10 m), 8380
kHz (35.80 m), 12795 kHz (23.45 m),
17750 kHz (16.90 m).
C During low-traffic hours, two auxiliary SW transmitters, model SWB4
"Pechino" by Marconi Wireless, operating in the 15-50 m band with 2 kW
output power, were employed for lowpriority communications, on the following frequencies: 8380 kHz (35.80 m),
12795 kHz (23.45 m).

Figure 13.

Location of the receive stations (triangles) for full-duplex operation.

Italo Radio also built a new receive station in Nodica, north
of Pisa, about 15 km away from Coltano, and not very far from
the shoreline (see Figures 1 and 14). The Nodica receive facility
hosted both listening and transmit operators who sent telegraphic
traffic to Coltano via wired line.

FAREWELL TO VLF. WELCOME TO SHORTWAVES: THE
GOLDEN ERA OF COLTANO STATION
In 1929 all the commercial traffic, which so far was sent via
Coltano, was assigned to the newly built station of Torrenova, near
Rome. As a consequence, the site of Coltano came under the direct
management of the Post and Telegraph Ministry, which decided
to use it for medium- and long-range service to merchant ships.
Thus, the Coltano station underwent a further upgrade, which incorporated the latest innovations in radio transmission techniques.
Actually, the era of boisterous and power-hungry VLF transmitters
(such as the spark gap, Poulsen or Béthenod-Latour types) was
coming to an end, and the advent of "high frequency" communications (i.e., with carrier frequencies above 1 MHz) was already a
solid fact, thanks to the progress in vacuum-tube electronics. The
renewal of Coltano's transmit facility was carried out under the
technical supervision of two qualified IRN scientists: the admirals
Gino Montefinale and Giuseppe Pession.8 See [31] for a detailed
8

24

Giuseppe Pession (1881-1947) was a rear admiral of the IRN
and a physicist. He was a professor of electromagnetism and radiotelegraphy and succeeded Marconi in the Chair of Electromagnetism at the University of Rome. Together with admiral
Gino Montefinale he designed the upgrade of Coltano radio station in the early 1930s. He was also the general director of Italian
Postal Service and he wrote a biography of Guglielmo Marconi.

C One MW transmitter operating in
the 600-800 m band with 1.5 kW output
power, was employed for medium-range service on the international distress frequency 500 kHz (600 m) and on 428.5
kHz (700 m).
C

One LW transmitter, made by IRN, operating in the 2000-
2400 m band with 5 kW output power, was employed for
medium- and long-range service on 142.8 kHz (2100 m) and
125 kHz (2400 m). An auxiliary transmitter operating in the
same band, with only 1.5 kW output power, was also available.

All the transmitters were hosted in the new radio building
(Figure 14) and were remotely operated from a receive station located in Nodica. This was the old receive station, built in the 1920s
by Italo Radio, which was suitably expanded and updated for pro-

Table 1.

Designation of the Radio Bands Adopted in this
Article
Band
Designation

Frequency
Range

Wavelength
Range

VLF (Very Low
Frequency)

< 100 kHz

> 3000 m

LW (Long
Wave)

100-300 kHz

1000-3000 m

MW (Medium
Wave)

300-3000 kHz

100-1000 m

SW (Short
Wave)

3-30 MHz

10-100 m

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

MARCH 2017



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