Tag Archives: RCI

World Premiere: Spectres of Shortwave/Ombres des ondes courtes

unnamed I’m very pleased to share this press release from filmmaker Amanda Dawn Christie:

WORLD PREMIERE :

Thursday, Sept. 22, 7:15 pm AST (11:15pm UTC)
Spectres of Shortwave / Ombres des ondes courtes
A film about radio waves, relationships, landscape, and loss.
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Exciting news! Spectres of Shortwave is finally finished!

After seven long years, it’s finally time to share this film and the radio doc with the public! The final corrections to subtitles and credits were completed two weeks ago, and the DCP shipped out last week! The world premiere screening takes place at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax next Thursday, September 22, at 7:15 pm.

This documentary about the Radio Canada International shortwave towers is both a film and a radio documentary, and while viewers watch the film in one part of the world, listeners can simultaneously listen to the radio doc in other parts of the world.

The film will be premiering in Canada at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax, while the radio documentary simultaneously makes it’s premiere on Wave Farm Radio out of New York.

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About the film:

Long before the internet, there was shortwave. A mysterious web of international shortwave radio towers once dominated the Tantramar marshscape. Meanwhile, local residents heard radio broadcasts emanate unexpectedly from their household appliances.

The Radio Canada International shortwave relay site was built during World War 2, to broadcast to Europe and Africa. It continued to broadcast around the world during the Cold War and beyond, not only for Canada, but also relaying transmissions for Radio Free Europe, Voice of Vietnam, Radio Korea, Radio Japan, and Radio China, among others. Located in Sackville, New Brunswick, it was perfectly positioned to transmit across the Atlantic Ocean, and covered most of the globe with its transmissions.

This experimental documentary film focuses on the flat marshland landscape accompanied by stories told by local residents and the technicians who worked at the site.

After beginning this project, the Canadian government announced that the Radio Canada International shortwave relay site would be shut down and dismantled. As such, a final chapter was added to the film, which documents the dismantling of this historic structure.

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About the Radio doc:

While the images of the film capture landscape imagery of the towers over four seasons in various weather conditions, the sound track of the film doubles as a radio documentary as stories told by local residents and the technicians who worked at the site are accompanied by field recordings from the area as well as contact microphone recordings made from the towers themselves.

In the final chapter of the documentary, the audio is comprised only of the contact microphone recordings of the towers and the sounds of their demolition. The beginning of the demolition is a rich soundscape with the drones of all thirteen towers playing together. As each tower falls and crashes to the ground, it’s voice is removed from the mix, until we are left with the single drone of the last tower standing until it falls.

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More info on the film, including video clips, photos, and press clippings can be found here:
www.spectresofshortwave.net

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World Premiere Film Screening:
Thursday, September 22, 7:15pm AST
Atlantic Film Festival: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Cineplex Cinemas: Park Lane: Theatre 5
Ticket purchases and info: click here

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World Premiere Radio Simulcast
Thursday, September 22, 6:15pm EST (11:15 UTC)
Wave Farm Radio: Acra, New York
Tune in and listen online here :
www.wavefarm.org/listen

This film was made possible with the support of
the Canada Council for the Arts,
the New Brunswick Arts Board,
the Shaw Hot Docs Completion Fund
the Linda Joy Post Award
the National Film Board of Canda : Atlantic Centre
the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative
studio Prim, and
Wave Farm WGXC FM

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Radio World: The evolution of shortwave radio

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who shares the following article by James Careless in Radio World Magazine.

The article includes interviews with Andy Sennitt, Kim Andrew Elliott, Nigel Fry, and even yours truly. The following is a short excerpt taken from the introduction of the article:

(Source: Radio World)

OTTAWA, Ontario — With the advent of radio in the 20th century, the shortwave band (1710–30,000 kHz) soon became a hotbed of long-distance radio broadcasting. Used primarily by state-run international broadcasters, plus ham radio operators and ship-to-shore radio communications, the shortwave band was prized due to its astoundingly broad reach.

That reach was — and is still — made possible by the tendency of ground-based shortwave radio transmissions to bounce off the ionosphere and back to earth; allowing shortwave broadcasts to “hop” repeatedly, increasing a broadcast’s range while minimizing its decay.

[…]At the height of the Cold War, the shortwave bands were packed with content as the Voice of America and West Germany’s Deutsche Welle (Voice of Germany) traded ideological punches with Radio Moscow and East Germany’s Radio Berlin International. This is because analog shortwave radio broadcasting was the only way for both sides to make their political cases cross international borders: There was no satellite TV, let alone any internet.

Read the full, in-depth article on the Radio World website…

This article is well worth reading and one of the more in-depth pieces I’ve seen in a trade publication or news site recently.

I should add that I completely agree with James Careless’ conclusion:

“[T]he research that went into this article suggests that the shortwave band is sufficiently alive to be still evolving.”

The fact is, the shortwave landscape is not what used to be in the Cold War. Many of those big voices have left the scene and, in the process, left the door open to others.

The shortwaves are a dynamic communications space that continues to evolve.

That’s why I keep listening.

Want to read more about the future of shortwave radio? Click here to read Does Shortwave Radio Have a Future?

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Listening to The Link via Shortwave Service?

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As we mentioned in a post last month, Radio Canada International’s program “The Link” is now being broadcast via Shortwave Service in Germany.

If you’ve been listening to The Link via shortwave, SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, encourages you to send RCI a short listener report.

You can either send a brief e-mail to Mark Montgomery via [email protected] or use the contact form at http://www.rcinet.ca/en/contact/.

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Spectres of Shortwave: Help Amanda put the finishing touches on her film

RCI programming returns to shortwave via Shortwaveservice.com

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who writes:

Here is the response from Christian Milling, the director of Radio 700 and Shortwaveservice. Note that he is stressing the difference between Radio 700 (as a program and separate broadcasting station) and Shortwaveservice (as the provider of technical services for the shortwave transmitters at the Kall-Krekkel). The transmitters are actually maintained by Burkhard Baumgartner, DF5XV, under the name “Classic Broadcast”.

All three operations are closely linked so it’s understandable that there is confusion about who does what. Furthermore, in the WRTH, we have “Radio 700 Kurzwellendienst” (Radio 700 Shortwave Service). No reply directly from RCI yet.

Dear Richard Langley,

thank you very much for your e-Mail. Indeed we (not Radio700 but Shortwaveservice.com as technical provider) has set up an official cooperation with Radio Canada International which allows us to transmit the english, french and spanish programming. So this will be a long-term relay on a legal basis. As we prepare a spanish language outlet, the spanish broadcast of RCI will follow later on on SW.

The propagation conditions are a bit lousy at the moment, resulting in a bigger skipzone since a few days on 7310 kHz. Normally we boom into on that frequency also in Twente (which is approx. 200km away from our tranmitter [sic] site). We got some reception reports from the UK, which one from Manchester I’d like to quote: “Good clear signal, just some slight fading from solar disturbance that was taking place. How wonderful to hear Radio Canada International back on shortwave again, I really hope they continue broadcasting from Kall, I couldn’t believe it when I saw they would be broadcasting here this week.”

As the brodcasts [sic] are intended for the reception in europe and most speak either french or english and our weekend-schedule is very crowded, we only managed to find a slot for both languages at a time. But we will think about a re-run of the shows on a different day.

Thanks for tuning in!

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best regards,
Christian Milling

Thanks so much for the update, Richard!

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Radio Canada International back on shortwave via Radio 700

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who shares the following message:

Only a barely-detectable carrier [of Radio Canada International] on 7310 kHz from Radio 700 Kurzwellendienst (or Radio 700 Shortwave Service using the web-interfaced University of Twente SDR receiver at 15:00 UTC. However, the online streaming of Radio 700’s 7310 kHz transmission came through clearly 😉 and, indeed, an RCI program is being transmitted. In fact, it’s this week’s “The LINK Online”!

So, finally, RCI is back on shortwave. Too bad the signal for the English program isn’t stronger. I was waiting for the scheduled start of the French RCI program at 14:30 UTC on 6005 kHz but when I tuned in via Twente at 14:15 UTC it was already in progress with a good signal! So, obviously it starts at an earlier time. Perhaps 14:00 UTC? What’s the point of having the English and French programs on at the same time? Some of us might want to listen to both.

[…]The French-language RCI program was the weekly program “Tam-Tam Canada” (with the familiar tam-tam drum signature music) and it was today’s edition that was broadcast. Good reception via Twente. It ended at about 14:52 UTC with then a switch briefly to Radio 700 programming. I have queries out to both Radio 700 and RCI about these programs and will report back if I get further information.

[…]I wonder if there’s an active collaboration of RCI in this effort?

Please let us know what you discover, Richard! Though I imagine this broadcast of The Link and Tam-Tam Canada may be a limited broadcast run, it would be incredibly cool to hear RCI on shortwave once again.

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Radio Canada International’s 71st anniversary

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Iurescia (LW4DAF), who writes:

Today February 25 th is the 71th anniversary of Radio Canada International.

They published this:

http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/02/25/history-feb-25-1945-canadas-voice-to-the-world-official-start/

Earlier this month, I listened to a 2012 spectrum recording of the 31 meter band–RCI’s north Quebec service was transmitting on 9,625 kHz. I sure do miss them on the shortwaves but I’m glad I can do a little radio time travel with my SDRs and tune in once again from time to time.

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