Clarence Jones was delighted as he read the news in a letter from Clarence Moore. He had gone back to the United States on furlough, hoping to purchase a used 5,000-watt transmitter, and instead they would be getting a brand-new 10,000-watt (10-kilowatt) transmitter. Clarence could hardly wait for the new transmitter to arrive in Quito. But before it arrived, much work and planning had to be done.
Several big changes had taken place in Ecuador in the year Clarence had been away in the United States. The biggest change was that Shell Oil, a Dutch/British-owned company, had been granted permission to explore for oil in the Oriente. Until now, few foreigners had lived in the eastern jungles of Ecuador. The Oriente had no roads, airstrips, or sturdy bridges over its many rivers, making it a difficult place to get in and out of, as Clarence had learned firsthand. To explore for oil in the region, the Shell Oil Company had begun building a road from the town of Baños down the Andes to the place it intended to use as its base of operation in the Oriente, a place it had named Shell Mera. There, on a stretch of boggy, flat land between the Pastaza and Motolo Rivers, the company was planning to build a mile-long airstrip so that it could fly equipment and personnel into the region.
The efforts of the Shell Oil Company meant that for the first time in history, the Oriente was opening up to the outside world. Clarence was quick to realize that the opening up of the Oriente also meant opening up the region to radio. Radio receivers could be delivered to the many isolated villages throughout the area so that the Indians who lived there could hear Christian radio. Of course, this was a goal that Clarence knew would take a lot of planning before it could be carried out.
Another change had also taken place. Clarence had helped write the communication and radio laws that were now in force in Ecuador. As a result, he knew that a transmitter as powerful as the 10-kilowatt one being built by Clarence Moore could not be situated within the city limits. Radio HCJB would have to find a new home outside the city limits.
Clarence and Stuart Clark looked for a new site for the radio station and found a suitable property, a cabbage patch on the north side of Quito, outside the city limits. Since the property was larger than HCJB needed, Stuart negotiated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance to buy half of the land on which to build a new school.
Once the purchase of the property was complete, building began straightaway. First a transmitter house was constructed, and then a new home was built for the Jones family that contained ample room for missionary guests. Eager to replicate the beautiful gardens at Quinta Corston, Clarence planted avenues of stately palm trees, and he put calla lilies, roses, and geraniums in flower beds around the new house.
The building at the new site was completed by the time Clarence Moore arrived in Quito with the transmitter in September 1939. That same month news arrived that Germany had invaded Poland and that, in response, Britain and France had declared war on Germany.
The new transmitter was moved into the newly built transmitter room, and a one-hundred-foot antenna tower made from slender eucalyptus poles lashed together was erected. A rotary-beam antenna was fastened to the top of the tower. Once the antenna was up and the transmitter installed, it was time to test the new equipment.
Late one evening the phone rang in the Joneses’ house at Quinta Corston (they had not yet moved into their new home), and Clarence picked it up. “Hello,” he said.
“Get over here with your camera. We’ve got balls of fire, and music on the mountain!” Clarence Moore exclaimed from the other end of the telephone line.
Clarence headed over to the new site as quickly as he could, unsure of what Clarence Moore had meant when he said, “We’ve got balls of fire.” But as he approached the property, the meaning quickly became clear. Four-foot-long streaks of lightning were arcing off the antenna ends, lighting up the night sky.
Clarence ran over to a bewildered-looking Clarence Moore, who stood staring up at the top of the arcing antenna. “What’s the problem?” he asked.
Clarence Moore scratched his head, and still looking at the antenna, he said, “I don’t know, really. No one has ever encountered this before. But of course no one has ever tried to put up a radio antenna at ninety-three-hundred feet above sea level either. But if this keeps up, the heat will eventually melt the ends off the antenna terminals.”
Over the next several days, Clarence Moore finally worked out what was causing the antenna to arc. He explained to Clarence that the problem was caused by high voltage in the rarefied atmosphere at this altitude. “There has to be a way to stop it. I’m just not sure what it is,” he told Clarence with a frown. “I need to get away and think about the problem for a few days.”
And that is what Clarence Moore did. He packed up his technical manuals and headed to the coast. Several days later he arrived back in Quito, the puzzling frown gone from his face. “I have the solution to our problem,” he told Clarence, pulling four copper toilet bowl floats from his bag. “These should do the trick.”
Clarence Jones looked puzzled, and Clarence Moore explained. “I’ll put one of these floats on each of the antenna terminals, basically eliminating the antenna ends where the arcing is coming from.” Sure enough, the copper toilet bowl floats fixed the problem.
While he had been at the coast mulling over a solution to the arcing problem, Clarence Moore had also come up with an idea for how to improve the overall performance of the antenna. Clarence Jones watched as Clarence Moore built a square of continuous wire with a reflector behind it. When the device was all put together on a circular pad at the top of the antenna tower, it resembled a cube, which Clarence Moore called a “cubical quad” antenna. Clarence Jones was very pleased with the improved performance of the cubical quad. And since the device was made of continuous wire, it had no ends to arc in the atmosphere.
Everyone worked feverishly to get the new transmitter and antenna up and running, and when everything was finally ready, a dedication service for the new transmitter was organized. The dedication service was held on Easter Sunday, March 24, 1940. Ecuadorian President Andres Cordova attended the service, arriving with a full military escort. The American ambassador to Ecuador also attended. During the service, the president gave a speech.
“I am thankful to the Voice of the Andes that the opportunity has been given me to put into operation its machinery, closing the electric switch that gives it life. And upon declaring this new station officially inaugurated, I repeat my felicitations to its directors and give my best wishes that this enterprise, so highly respected in this country, shall continue to reap its abundant and well-earned rewards.”
Then, with great pomp and ceremony, President Cordova threw the switch, and the new 10,000-watt transmitter was officially on the air.
Clarence felt tears welling in his eyes as he held Katherine’s hand and watched the ceremony. He thought back to just nine years before when, on Christmas Day, HCJB went on the air for the first time with a 200-watt transmitter. Now here they were inaugurating a transmitter that was fifty times more powerful. Clarence could hardly wait to see how far around the world the signal from the new transmitter would beam.
Now that HCJB could broadcast to the world, Clarence and his team at the radio station worked hard to produce programs in a variety of languages. Reuben could speak Swedish and started a broadcast in that language. He was soon joined at the microphone by Ellen Campaña, a Swedish woman married to a high official in the Ecuadorian government.
Peter Deyneka, Clarence’s old friend from the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle who had started an organization called the Slavic Gospel Association, sent down programs to be broadcast in Russian. Many missionaries who had been forced by hostile governments out of the countries where they were serving also began arriving in Quito, ready and able to present programs and Bible readings in a variety of languages. Soon HCJB was broadcasting in eighteen languages, including German, Portuguese, Japanese, French, Yiddish, Italian, Dutch, and Czech. Clarence was happy. Finally the ministry had grown into its name—the World Radio Missionary Fellowship.
It was not long before letters began to pour in to HCJB headquarters in Quito. As Clarence saw where the letters were coming from, he was amazed at how far afield listeners were able to pick up the signal of Radio HCJB. Letters and prayer requests came from Japan, New Zealand, India, Germany, and Russia. The letters meant even more work for the staff at the radio station, since Clarence insisted that every inquiry be referred to a local missionary or pastor.
Clarence read many of the letters himself. One came from Belize in Central America:
I am a Mayan Indian. For several years I have tuned in HCJB. I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior; my wife and two daughters also became believers. Our lives have changed; we now make Scripture reading our daily habit. Your programs open our vision to more spiritual living and awake my soul to help others come to Christ.
Another arrived from New Delhi, India:
By chance I came across your station on my radio. Is it really true that by believing in Christ we can achieve salvation? I am a seventeen-year-old college student, and I have so many questions about God.
One came from Connecticut in the United States:
I turned my shortwave radio to HCJB, and my roommate told me to turn that junk off. But I insisted that we listen. The next evening when I walked in, he already had HCJB tuned in. A week later he accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.
The new transmitter had been beaming radio broadcasts around the world for twenty-one months when news arrived that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. In response, the following day the United States declared war on Japan. The United States was now an active participant in the Second World War, which had been going on in Europe and North Africa for two years. As a result, the programs broadcast by HCJB took on a new urgency, and the staff produced and broadcast the Service Stripes Hour to inspire and support the men and women fighting in the armed forces.
The Second World War was also touching Quito. Many German spies had infiltrated the countries of South America, and Ecuador was no exception. Five hundred German soldiers were stationed at the German embassy in Quito, and they liked to march back and forth in a show of force with their swastika armbands clearly visible for all to see. German bombers would circle the city from time to time, dropping leaflets boasting of their intentions to take over the country. It was a tense time, and Clarence and Stuart laid out an evacuation route from the city should the Germans invade. In fact, Clarence was warned one day by a government official.
“We expect a German strike tomorrow,” the official said. “Order your men to shoot their families should there be a takeover.”
Clarence knew he could never do that, and fortunately the following day the sky above Quito was abuzz with American P47 airplanes, and no German attack occurred.
Clarence was also facing challenges at home.
His sixteen-year-old daughter, Marian, was very ill. She had fainted and fallen, banging her head on the concrete curbing in the process and fracturing her skull. A huge blood clot had developed at the site of the injury, and the doctor was unsure whether Marian would ever fully recover from the accident. He ordered long-term bed rest for her. However, this turned out to be not such an easy thing to enforce on the usually active Marian. It was also difficult for Katherine to take care of her daughter, since she was once again pregnant and in need of a lot of bed rest herself. Clarence did what he could to help his family, making meals between programs and taking one or two of the children at a time to the studio to relieve Katherine of some of her workload.
