A VILLAGE chapel went live on air as part of a global amateur radio event.

Short wave radio enthusiast Mark Chanter and a team of helpers were at St Ive Methodist Chapel to set up the equipment needed for ‘Churches On The Air’ (CHOTA), an initiative run by the World Association of Christian Radio Amateurs and Listeners.

With two eight metre masts, a radio and amplifier, and two dipoles to cover a range of frequencies installed by late afternoon, Mark spent the night making contacts via USB all over the world.

‘A few countries that we made contact with were Brazil, Kuwait, Turkey, Mauritania, Morocco and Saudi Arabia,’ he said.

‘The CHOTA event itself began at 10am, and our first contact was on a frequency of 7.165 to St Mary’s Church, Buckden, in Cambridgeshire. We made 69 contacts throughout the event that included 12 churches. Radio connections were poor in the afternoon, but Chris, David, Brian, Ian and I all enjoyed helping during the event.’

The idea behind Churches on The Air is to bring people’s faith and their interests together, said Mark.

‘I set up the event to share my faith with the world on air. And also to show that a church can be used for other events such as meetings and so on - without forgetting that the main purpose for the church building is worship,’ he said.

‘I believe that the church is the people, not the building - but we are losing so many of our buildings, and it would be good to encourage others to use their church for events like ours.’