Special callsign activation – COLTANO RADIO – II5IAC

From INORC Secretary:

I can tell you that it has obtained permission for the activation of Coltano Radio  (IAC) with the special call II5IAC. We will be active from March 24th to April 2nd.

Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 , was the founder of the Center Radio Coltano (near Pisa-Tuscany) , and to him is due the first radiotelegraph transmission carried out  in 1903 with a spark transmitter : this fact, which was originally owned by the House of Savoy , lent itself very well to the long-wave transmissions , as marshy area and , as such, he minimized the loss of the signal. Completed a few years of delay due to bureaucratic obstacles, the center was officially opened by Guglielmo Marconi in the presence of King Vittorio Emanuele III with a transmission to Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, November 19, 1911. The Center allowed to communicate daily with the lands of Africa (especially in the colonies in Eritrea, Massawa) and Canada . For the management of the radio station was built the first building, the ” House Marconi ” , containing all the control panels and controls for the 16 antennas, up to 75 meters high , designed by Marconi  in mind the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Chronicles remember how, looking south from Pisa , the landscape was very different from the current one.
From 1919 to 1924 Coltano Radio  was employed by the Navy to extend communications to sailing vessels, thanks to an expansion of the antennas. It was in the 1920s that was built a large antenna “curtain ” of 240 meters on each side, supported by pylons 250 meters, at the same time, to Nodica, in the area of Migliarino, was made an additional reception center .
For a certain period of time the management was entrusted to a private company, “Italo Radio”, until in 1930 the Center came under the direct management of the Ministry of Posts. At that time, the center had its greatest splendor: it was in fact used as a major hub for telegraphy and radio communications with ships and terrestrial stations across the globe, he is considered one of the most important European Center. In 1931 from Coltano, Marconi by the radio signals  lighted  in Rio de Janeiro the Christ the Redeemer, as a demonstration of Marconi reliability and importance of intercontinental radio communications .
The center, which until 1940 was regularly used for communication with the whole world, was destroyed during military actions at the end of World War II, the Marconi House suffered only minor damage, by all the antennas were mined for their total destruction,  the antennas or the Station Radio was never rebuilt nor the structures were reused more .
In 1952 were built  in Coltano a production center of Rai, now closed, and two medium-wave transmitters . Today, it is still in operation only a medium wave transmitter power of 120 kilowatts which broadcasts on Rai Radio 1 frequency 657 kilohertz .