Qualla: HCJB - The Voice of the Andes

HCJB - The Voice of the Andes: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mschaa, CC BY-SA 4.0. On Christmas Day 1931, a 200-watt transmitter in a house in Quito clicked on, a single wire strung between two makeshift telephone poles started radiating radio waves, and for thirty minutes the voice of an American missionary named Clarence Jones spoke in English and Spanish to whoever happened to be listening. Almost no one was. Ecuador had no commercial radio stations yet - HCJB was the country's first. The Joneses were broadcasting from their own living room, powered by equipment they had largely built themselves. The call letters stood, by one popular explanation, for Hoy Cristo Jesus Bendice - Today Christ Jesus Blesses. It was the beginning of the world's first Christian shortwave station, and the first serious attempt to turn a radio signal into a missionary.

Image: Mschaa | CC BY-SA 4.0

HCJB - The Voice of the Andes: The Vision From Chicago

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SkagitRiverQueen (talk) 02:48, 14 October 2009 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0. Clarence Wesley Jones was a Salvation Army minister's son who had graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, played trombone in evangelist Paul Rader's tabernacle, and helped run Rader's weekly radio ministry - a program called WJBT, short for Where Jesus Blesses Thousands....

Image: SkagitRiverQueen (talk) 02:48, 14 October 2009 (UTC) | CC BY-SA 3.0

HCJB - The Voice of the Andes: Fourteen Languages and a Quad Antenna

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mschaa, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1941 the station was broadcasting in Russian, Swedish, and Quichua. By 1944, programming ran in fourteen languages, including Czech, Dutch, French, and German. Arabic, Italian, and Hebrew programs arrived on acetate-coated aluminum transcription discs shipped from elsewhere. I...

Image: Mschaa | CC BY-SA 3.0

HCJB - The Voice of the Andes: The Listeners Who Didn't Care About Religion

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aaronno, CC BY-SA 4.0. For shortwave enthusiasts around the world - known as DXers, the X standing for distance - HCJB became something more complicated than a missionary station. It was a signal from the Andes, a QSL card with a mountain on it, proof of reception at the edge of what was possible with ...

Image: Aaronno | CC BY-SA 4.0

HCJB - The Voice of the Andes: The End of the Signal

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aaronno, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2009, HCJB turned off its shortwave transmitters. The Ecuadorian government had demanded the removal of the Pifo transmitter station to make way for the new Quito airport, which opened in 2013. But the deeper reason was simpler: people no longer listened to shortwave. The miss...

Image: Aaronno | CC BY-SA 4.0