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The mothballed Shepparton shortwave broadcast station could be coming back online.
South Australian senator Nick Xenophon will introduce legislation to parliament this week to force the ABC to bring back domestic and international shortwave broadcasts.
The broadcasts were shut down last week, after decades of the shortwave signals being listened to by people from across the pacific region and around the world.
A spokesperson for Mr Xenophon said a bill would be introduced sometime this week to bring back the domestic shortwave broadcasts in the Northern Territory, as well as the international Radio Australia broadcasts, which were beamed to the world from Shepparton.[…]
Someone recently described my shack in Oxford as ‘an impressive mess’…. and that really is just about the most positive comment I’ve ever received regarding my listening post! So, my apologies for displaying the mess in public, but in response to having been asked many times by subscribers to Oxford Shortwave Log to ‘share my shack’, here it is, well most of it at least, in all it’s unadulterated glory.
The primary reason however for this post is to share my most recent transatlantic medium wave catches using the brilliant Elad FDM DUO and Wellbrook ALA1530 magnetic loop antenna. This excellent combination continues to pull in really nice DX, although not so much very recently as propagation has been fairly rubbish. However, since early to mid December, the dynamic duo have managed to pull in a number of transatlantic medium wave signals, including Radio Rebelde, Cuba on (670 and 710 kHz), KVNS Texas, CHIN Radio, Toronto, WFED Washington DC, WWNN Health and Wealth Radio, Pompano Beach, Florida, and huge signals from WMEX Boston and WWKB Buffalo, New York. Embedded reception videos and text links follow below and in the mean time, I wish you all great DX!
Clint Gouveia is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Clint actively publishes videos of his shortwave radio excursions on his YouTube channel: Oxford Shortwave Log. Clint is based in Oxfordshire, England.
The receiver comes with its own WinTV software for tuning, scanning, watching and recording TV programs. It is one of the few USB dongle size receivers for North America’s ATSC digital TV standard. A have posted a video of my reception recordings from a roundtrip flight Miami to St Louis.
Reception from commercial airplanes is possible as far as 400 miles with the simple unobtrusive “stick” antenna.
Channel scanning is pretty slow and it is possible that by the time you detect a signal, save it, and tune to it you are 50 miles away from the point where you detected it.
Many times signals are detected but no video can be shown due to weak signal. Users in Europe may have a different experience as the availability of DVB-T USB dongles and software is much wider.
TV DX can make a coast to coast flight a much more interesting experience!
The B16 International broadcasting schedules update file is now available for free download from www.wrth.com – click on the ‘latest PDF updates’ link and follow the instructions. The file details the latest frequency and station changes from both international and clandestine/target broadcasters. We hope you find this file a useful accompaniment to the printed WRTH.
I worked at the Droitwich Transmitting Station through 1972-1974, the home of the BBC UK Long Wave 1500 m/200 kHz service as it was then.
In the summer of 1973 I was junior member of the engineering team, a 21 year-old Technical Assistant, and manned the control room for the four services from the site, Radio One, 1214 kHz, Radio Two, 200 kHz and Radio Four, 1052 kHz.
It was customary to check the two 200 kW transmitters, T7A and T7B for power balance prior to the Shipping Forecast and I duly went out in the transmitter hall just before the start at 1355.
I noted one was a little down and the other a little high so I pressed what I thought was the raise / lower buttons on the control desk. Unfortunately I had pressed the main on/off buttons instead.
The pair of transmitters came instantly off the air. I could hear on the audio monitoring the announcer starting the broadcast… it takes a while to reinstate the mercury arc rectifiers as the regulators had to run all the way down to zero and then back up to 14 kV.
By the time I had got it back on the air he was just finishing so we had to contact London and arrange a repeat after the 1400 news bulletin… Ooops!
I was much more careful after that when adjusting the transmitters.
The Senior Maintenance Engineer was not best pleased, as he had to write up the shutdown report for London citing “Operational Error” as the cause.
Happy Days…
Dave G4OYX.
That’s a brilliant story, Dave! Thank you so much for sharing. Oh…I’m sure it’s a lot easier to laugh about it now than it was when it happened! 🙂
Some claim these were used by the FCC for surveillance. I can believe that as IFR is a professional manufacturer of commercial radio test equipment. I have their 500A service monitor.
Beautiful receiver, but this one is way overpriced. They usually start around a grand or so with a “Make Offer” contingency. One was sold in December for $481.
Thank you for sharing this, Mario! Knowing the IFR is essentially a piece of test equipment, I’m very curious how it might compare with a similarly-priced tabletop (broadcast) radio.
Like a lot of shortwave radio listeners, since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed tuning my radio to parts of the world where events are unfolding. There’s something tangible–something that is transportive–when you listen to a news coming directly from the source, on air and originating from halfway across the planet.
I believe, listening to government broadcasters, you get a much better picture of what is actually happening. For example, sometimes the broadcaster devotes the whole news hour to an important event, or (perhaps even more telling!) doesn’t mention anything at all! The Voice of Turkey comes to mind as a recent example.
Yesterday evening, I tuned to Radio Romania International–one of my favorite little international broadcasters.
I was happy to hear that RRI at least featured the protest as their very first news item.
This recording was made on 5,960 kHz starting at 0100 UTC on February 06, 2017. Receiver used was a WinRadio Excalibur with a large horizontal delta loop antenna here in North Carolina. The following recording includes a few minutes of the RRI interval signal. Enjoy:
(Source: Shepparton News via Richard Cuff)
