1906 Site selection by Doutre.
1907 Construction and installation of the station.  Main equipment was a Fairbanks-Morse 3 Horse Power gasoline engine, driving a 1,000 Watt alternating current generator.  The transmitter was the Shoemaker type, with the open core transformer, tubular glass condensers, fixed spark gap with a helix inductance coil for resonating.  A crystal detector radio receiver rounded out the installation.  (A. Lawton notes station was on the air testing November 25th.)  Newspaper reports the original five stations will be open for commercial traffic on December 15th.  Unfortunately the Colonist paper reports for the past month (Dec 07) Pachena is unable to communicate with Gonzales (Victoria) but never-the-less can work vessels off California.  By December 29 the lads had the bugs out and Pachena was now working Victoria.
1908 In February the station is commissioned with L. H. Bradbury as Officer in Charge.  Later in the year Bradbury moves over to the Estevan Station and station closes down due to a shortage of operators.  Call sign KPD
1909 Duplex house is constructed.
1910 Station is reopened in January.  A. Buchanan is OIC at $85 per month.  Colin Kennedy is wireless operator and Officer in Charge.
1911  Census of 1911 has Colin Kennedy as Officer in Charge.  He leaves for California later in the year.
1912  
1913 Call sign changed to VAD from KPD
1914 Military guard supplied for the duration of the war to rebuff any German raiding parties.
   
  Radio Beacon installed. 
1922 Station is configured as a radio direction finding and wireless station.  Appropriate direction finding loop antennas and receiving equipment installed. 
1939 Syd Jones transfers in as the station's final Officer In Charge.
    Location selected by Cecil Doutre in 1906 during his west coast inspection trip. The station was commissioned in 1908 but shortly shut down to an operator shortage at Estevan Point.  In 1910 the station was reopened. 1922 saw the station became a radio direction finding station, offering bearings from Pachena to a vessel at sea requesting such information.  A vessel could get bearing from two or three different direction finding stations and thus find its location at the point where the bearing lines intersect.  In the banner photo, the DF receiver is in the small operations building at the photo's center. The receiver loops have been emphasized for clarity.

    If you have Google Earth on your computer, click here to see Pachena Point.
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