Category Archives: Radio History

SAQ receives 438 listener reports

Grimeton VLF mast

Alexanderson Alternator station SAQ says it received 438 listener reports — ‘an incredible amount’ — for its June 30 Alexanderson Day transmissions from Sweden including 8 ‘super’ DX reports, five from the USA and three from Canada.

The historic electro-mechanical transmitter, which dates back to the 1920s, is fired up periodically throughout the year on 17.2 kHz.

“We are very thankful for all your enthusiastic and positive feedback, with images, recordings, videos, and even Morse ink writer strips,” SAQ said.

The station is a World Heritage Site in Grimeton, Sweden and SAQ’s June 30 message commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first east-to-west transatlantic voice transmission from the Marconi station in Ireland to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

SAQ has posted an interactive map showing the locations of all received listener reports from recent transmissions and video of the Alexanderson Day transmission event has been posted to its YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/user/AlexanderSAQ/videos

Swiss Shortwave Merry-Go-Round Founder Bob Thomann (HB9GX) is Silent Key

5 Replies

Readers old enough to remember listening to SBC/Swiss Radio International will, no doubt, remember Bob Thomann. I just received the following note from Bob Zanotti:

Dear Friends and Broadcasting Colleagues,

[O]ur old friend and colleague, Bob Thomann HB9GX, passed away peacefully on Saturday afternoon 3 August local time. He would have been 91 in September.

Image via Radio World

[…]Bob Thomann was the founder of the Swiss Shortwave Merry-Go-Round on
SBC/Swiss Radio International back in the 50’s. He and I were teamed up in 1970, when I joined SRI. We co-presented the technical mailbag show,
which became know as “The Two Bobs” for 24 years between 1970 and the show’s ending in June 1994. Bob never missed a show, even when we had to do a telephone hookup when he was hospitalized back in the 80’s.

the Schwarzenburg transmitter site, often mentioned by the Two Bobs (via Jonathan Marks)

This is the end of “The Two Bobs” Era and an era in shortwave broadcasting in general. But I’m happy to say that the show lives on at www.switzerlandinsound.com, where it has its own section. All that survived from the “Merry-Go-Round” is there, including new material we produced especially for the website. And this will remain as a memorial to Bob Thomann and his contribution to shortwave broadcasting as long as I’m still around.

Mid-1960s photo showing Bob with Heidi Schweizer and Pamela — SBC’s DX Trio at the time. (Image courtesy of Richard Langley)

Bob Thomann was my friend, colleague and fellow ham operator for many years. I will always fondly remember those golden days we shared together. Long live those memories.

73,
Bob Zanotti

Click here to listen to archived episodes of The Two Bobs at Switzerland in Sound.

Bob, we’re so sorry for the loss of your dear friend and colleague. His memory certainly lives on.

1963 Film features the Rugby Radio Station

1 Reply

(Source: Southgate ARC)

Rugby was not a conventional radio station but a communications hub transmitting radio telephony, including the now obsolete telex service that later gave way to fax

The 800 ft high masts had been a landmark since the 1920s and, as reporter David Rees finds out, maintaining them is tough, particularly during the coldest winter of the twentieth century. As one rigger says, “The wind doesn’t have time to go round you, it goes straight through you.”

Eighty years of broadcasting history came to an end when Rugby Radio Station was closed in 2007.

Watch the 1963 Rugby Radio Station at
https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-rugby-radio-station-1963-online

Rugby Radio Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_Radio_Station

Post Readers: Please note that this film is a region-blocked video and only viewable in the UK. If one were to know such things, a way to circumvent this would be to watch it using a VPN located in the UK. 🙂

You might also read this Rugby Radio book review by Dave Porter found in our archives.

From the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive: VOA and BBC on the anniversary of moon landing

4 Replies

Eagle in lunar orbit photographed from Columbia. (Image: NASA)

There are a hundreds of fascinating off-air radio recordings in our Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.

One of our frequent contributors, Tom Laskowski, has digitally converted numerous magnetic tape recordings from his personal collection to share with the archive. Tom made the following recording of the Voice of America on July 20, 1979 at 0500 UTC on the 31 meter band.

Tom notes:

The first 4:30 is from a VOA newscast that aired before the main part of the program.

The main recording was presented on the 10th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I enjoy listening to this every year on the landing anniversary.

I’ve enjoyed listening to this 10th anniversary presentation as we, today, celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing::

Click here to download this recording.

[Update:] Tom also shares another recording that marks this anniversary:

I thought this might be [another] appropriate file to upload considering we are marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. I recorded this program thirty years ago on July 20, 1989 [5.975 MHz at 0400 UTC] the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Omnibus takes a look back at the historic Apollo mission and how and why it happened:

Click here to download the recording.

Thank you so much for sharing this, Tom!

Readers: Note that you can subscribe to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive as a podcast via iTunes or by using the following RSS feed: http://shortwavearchive.com/archive?format=rss You can also listen via TuneIn.

Covert shortwave transmitters smuggled into trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann

3 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who writes:

I ran across this fascinating historical article about how the Associated Press and the New York Daily News each smuggled a covert shortwave radio transmitter into the 1935 courtroom trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was charged with kidnapping and murdering the young son of Charles Lindbergh.

http://www.rfcafe.com/references/short-wave-craft/short-waves-hauptmann-trial-short-wave-craft-june-1935.htm

Neither news organization knew of the other’s covert transmitter, and crossed signals led to erroneous news of the verdict being reported.

Wow! What a fascinating bit of history, Ed! I bet those briefcase transmitters were heavy!

“Night of Nights” CW Event Returns Tonight!

1 Reply

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Brian Smith (W9IND), who shares the following announcement:

“Night of Nights” CW Event Returns Friday (U.S. Time)

“It was 20 years ago today,” say members of the Maritime Radio Historical Society, but they’re not covering a famous Beatles song.

They’ll certainly be on key, however, when they fire up two maritime CW stations, KPH and KFS, and their amateur radio club station, K6KPH, for the 20th annual “Night of Nights” at 8:01 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, July 12/0001 UTC Saturday, July 13. (Alas, several previously participating stations will be absent again this year, including ship-to-shore stalwart WLO of Mobile, Alabama, and a quartet of Coast Guard stations.)

This weekend’s event marks the date in 1999 when commercial Morse code operations ceased in the United States. One year later, the preservation-minded MRHS staged its first “Night of Nights,” treating shortwave radio enthusiasts to the dits and dahs of historic maritime station KPH and other callsigns that were once presumed dead on shortwave CW frequencies.

This year, the society has put out a special appeal to anyone (licensed or not) with CW proficiency to help operate K6KPH. While KPH and KFS transmit “code wheels” (repeating messages), personal messages, and tributes to long-gone maritime stations and operators, K6KPH will make CW contacts with other amateur stations on 3550, 7050, 14050 and 21050 kHz.

Whether reporting for CW duty or not, the public is welcome to observe today’s event and tour the facility, located at 17400 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Doors open at 3 p.m. local (Pacific) time.

And if you’re not within driving distance, you can tune in the Morse signals on the following medium wave and shortwave frequencies:

KPH: 426, 500, 4742.0, 6477.5, 8642.0, 12808.5, 17016.8, 22477.5 kHz

KFS: 12695.5 kHz

Reception reports go to P.O. Box 392, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956. Please include an SASE if you’d like a QSL.

The following links provide additional information:

Maritime Radio Historical Society:

http://www.radiomarine.org

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1109843077277&ca=156b371f-da9f-4fed-8819-4bb55bd7bd44

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1109843077277&ca=b54f353c-4692-4564-b79a-0059721f9206

National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/events_nightofnights.htm

Okay, Brian…that “being on key” bit? Clever! 🙂

Looking forward to some sweet CW music on the Night of Nights! Thank you for sharing!

What’s your favorite shortwave listening story?

21 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Zack Schindler (N8FNR), who writes:

Back in the 1980’s I was tuning around and came across two guys talking back and forth in a non-ham portion of the HF spectrum. They were not using any callsigns which I found weird so I kept listening. It became obvious that one guy was on the ground and the other was in a plane. The guy on the ground was trying to give the other guy instructions on where to land. The pilot kept saying that he was not seeing any of the landmarks that the other guy told him to look for. The man on land then gave the pilot a beacon callsign to navigate by so I looked it up and it was in the Yucatan. The pilot said that he was not receiving the beacon but after a bit said that he could see a water tower in a town. He flew near the tower and read off the name and it was a town in the panhandle of Florida.

So it appears to me that they were probably drug smugglers and the pilot was so bad that he was off course by 700 miles or so. I always wondered how this story played out.

Please reply with your favorite SWLing story here. I look forward to reading yours.

What a great idea, Zack!

In fact, I’ll sweeten the pot…

Next Sunday (July 14t, 2019) I will pick a commenter at random from this post and send them a copy of Joe Carr’s Loop Antenna Book which has been graciously donated by Universal Radio.

This is open to anyone, anywhere–I’ll ship it globally.

Please comment with you favorite shortwave listening story!

[Note: Please include a valid email in the email address field of the comment form, else I will not be able to contact you to get your shipping address. We never share your email or use it for any other purpose.]