"Ron" wrote in message
...
I just came across my old SWL collection and found a card from Radio
America from the Broadcast Band. I believe they broadcast from Swan
Island. Any info would be nice. What you know about them ?

1160 AM, 50 kw, 2-tower directional from Isla de Cisnes, a Honduran
possession SW of Cuba.

It operated with two names, Radio Swan and then Radio Americas. It was
evidently a CIA "front" and appeared to be operated by the Gibraltar
Steamship Corp, with an address in the Ingrahm Bldg. on 2nd in Miami. The
manager was on Horton Heath.

I visited the Ingrahm Bldg in 62 or 63... and found that the office was
essentially a mail drop. The office existed, but was the office of the
"Secretaría" of the´AIR, Asociación Interamericana de Radiodifusión. I met a
Mr. Ramón Goicochea, a Cuban who had worked with Goar Mestre before the
Revolution and was told that he could not give me much information.

Years later, in the late 60's, I was on the organizing committee of the
annual convention of the AIR in Quito, Ecuador. Who showed up to manage
things? Mr. Goicochea, who at that point admitted the station was funded by
the CIA and had the support of the exile community in Miami, from where
staff and supplies were ferried via private planes.

For many years, I had a reel to reel tape of the station recorded in Ohio on
the night of the Bay of Pigs invasion... but the tape eventually
disintegrated. It contained a lot of cryptic mentions, probably code words
for the invading forces.

Several DXers in the 60's, particularly one C. M. Stanbury of Ontario,
doubted the location of the station, and made much noise to prove its
location in other places. So there is an element of black helicopter
conspiracy here from the DX community. I am satisfied that the station was
on Swan, based on Mr. Goicochea's information as well as having hired,
later, some of the announcers who worked for Radio Americas and who later
worked for me at WHTT, WSUA and WCMQ in Miami.