Santa Marinella – IY0TCI

SANTA MARINELLA

IY0TCI / IY0TC (post 1997)

IY0TC Stazione Marconiana di Torre Chiaruccia

Traslated by — prof. Livio Spinelli

TORRE CHIARUCCIA was a 15 m height stonework Tower by the Thyrrenian Sea, situated in a favourable location at Capolinaro Cap in Santa Marinella (province of Rome) and next to Civitavecchia. The Tower was part or the Roman Imperial Communication System and it was rebuilt in the XVI Century by Pope Pius V at the time of the Lepanto sea battle as watch tower against Saracens incursions.

Till 1929 the tower and its surrounding area belonged to the Italian Navy then it was entrusted to the Italian National Research Centre – CNR whose President Guglielmo Marconi with two company engineers, Gerald Isted and Settimo Albalustro conducted experiments on microwaves and blind navigation with ships entering the harbour of Civitavecchia, radiomobile telephone and radio localization.

In 1932 as result of Marconi demonstration of duplex radiomobile telephony at Torre Chiaruccia, the Vatican authorities ordered a telephone link to be installed between the Vatican City and the Pope’s palace at Castelgandolfo, near Rome, the inauguration was in January 1933 this was the first microwave mobile commercial telephone link in the world.

In 1935 Marconi asked his company’s factory in Genoa to build him a small transmitter of 50-centimetre wavelength, with a receiver to match.

: Marconi 1935

In April 1935, while testing them at Torre Chiaruccia with Luigi Solari, he bounced radio waves off his car, driven back and forth by his chauffeur, and then off a circling aircraft. At every stage, the British parent company was kept informed of these experiments.

In December 1935 the British government asked the Marconi company to design and manufacture the transmitting ‘curtain’ antenna arrays for the first five ‘Chain Home’ radar stations, covering the Thames Estuary and approaches to London. In May 1937 came an order for providing similar arrays for 20 additional stations. Without the protection given by these radar stations, the Battle of Britain three summers later would almost certainly have been lost.
During WWII the Chiaruccia Tower was blown up in 1944 by the Nazi troops on their retreating.

In 1957 thanks to the rebuilding of the laboratory at Chiaruccia Tower the MARCONI National Radioelectric Centre conducted researches about radio ray propagation of the ionospheric echoes.
Nowadays it is a metereologic station of the Italian Air Force.

The Town of Santa Marinella, thanks to Prof. Livio Spinelli and General Guido Martinelli have made a Project of rebirth of the MARCONI National Radio Electric Research Centre – CRESM, and the reconstruction of the MARCONI Chiaruccia Tower with the cooperation of the Radio Amateurs from all over the world, eachone of them could support paying the cost of a stone: on which they could engrave their name and sign. The project includes the Research Laboratories, the Ham Radio Station, the Marconi Memorial and Museum and the Antennas Park because Marconi was the father of Radio as well as Antenna. Princess Elettra Marconi will donate to the Centre at Torre Chiaruccia two large parts of the Electra Yacht now at the Italian Space Centre of Fucino.

I0KHP Patrizio, manager IY0TC at Torre Chiaruccia – 2001

Norman G4USB one of the IMD founderS, in Bologna for the Centennial

celebration of Radio, next to Patrizio i0KHP and Alberto iK0CNA

The certificate of the first IY0TCI radio transmission in 1989

Since 1989 thanks to Patrizio Ciancarini i0KHP, Marconi Historian and Manager of IY0TC, the ARI Ham Association of Civitavecchia organizes the Radio Amateur Activities at Torre Chiaruccia, with the special Marconi sign IY0TCI (the third in Italy after IY4FGM and IY1TTM) issued by the Italian Communication Ministry. Since the Ham Station IY0TCI has always participated to the International Marconi Day to be held on Saturdays next to 25th April, birth date of the father of radio.

Photo (1927) dedicate from Guglielmo Marconi at Radio Club

of Civitavecchia. The historic IY0TC QSL card

Due to security reasons in the last years the Area of Torre Chiaruccia was off limits and it was not possible to locate our Ham Station IY0TCI therefore we aired from outside Torre Chiaruccia. In 1997 to better operate in telegraphy we changed the original sign to IY0TC.