Tag Archives: Shortwave Radio Audio Archive

Curating a list of endangered shortwave stations

RCI-Sackville-2012

That’s my minivan parked in front of the RCI Sackville transmitting station in June, 2012. The site was closed by the end of 2012 and towers demolished shortly thereafter.

Recently, my friend and fellow archivist, London Shortwave, and I engaged in a discussion about creating a curated list of “endangered” shortwave radio stations.

The idea being we could use such a list to focus our efforts and those of the archiving community on recording broadcasters that were most likely to disappear in the near future.

London Shortwave published an excellent post about this on his blog.

Please click here to read his post.

We quickly put this page on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive as a starting point.

We need your help to curate this list!

Please comment either on London Shortwave’s blog, or on this post, and suggest any additional broadcasters we may have missed. Please include a link to news item(s) which may indicate the broadcaster faces closure.

Of course, this list and the categories are subjective–we’re simply using our best judgement in this process. Often, broadcasters can shut down with little or no notice.

Thanks in advance for your help!

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Recording the final broadcast of Radio Belarus?

CommRadio-CR-1-Zoom-H2N-BBC-AntarcticaRegarding our previous post about Radio Belarus closing down, SWLing Post contributor, Paul Walker, reminds me that we should try to add a recording of the final broadcast to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.

If you can manage to capture the final broadcast (or any of the Belarus broadcasts between now and then), please consider submitting the recordings to the archive.

Many thanks!

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Colin’s welcome additions to the shortwave archive

IMG_0135If you’re a subscriber to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive, you’ve no doubt noted the excellent recordings submitted by Colin Newell (of DXer.ca) the past few weeks.

Colin has been digitizing loads of off-air recordings made in the 1970s and 1980s. His recordings include rare DX, Cold War broadcasters, west coast pirate radio stations, mediumwave DX, and much more.

I encourage you to click here to browse and listen to what Colin has uploaded so far.

Consider subscribing to the shortwave archive so you don’t miss new additions when they’re published!

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Recordings of final mediumwave broadcasts from Luxembourg, France and Germany

AM-Dial-Digital-Grundig-Mediumwave-MWMany thanks to several of you who recorded the final sign-ons and sign-offs of several European broadcasters who pulled the plug on mediumwave transmissions this past weekend.

SRAA contributor, Richard Langley, recorded the following broadcasts and posted them to our Shortwave Radio Audio Archive. Click on the following links for recordings and Richard’s excellent notes:

Bernhard Albicker of IntervalSignals.org and AM-Tuners also contacted me with links to recordings he made of the following:

Radio Luxembourg (RTL) special broadcast in honor of the former English service:

Notes:

  • 00:00:00 CRI german, no closing announcement
  • 00:07:49 RTL special broadcast: final 2 hours of RTL “Great 208” from Dec., 1991
  • 02:12:12 National Anthem of LUX

Deutschlandfunk DLF final sign-off:

A special thanks to Bernhard for including the following notes from the final DLF broadcast (in German):

  • 01:03 Announcement of closure. This announcement was broadcast before the full hour since the month of November followed by time signal and news.
  • Within the news at 05:05–item about shutdown of Medium Wave “Era of medium wave ends in Germany” followed by weather report at 05:37
  • 46:35 switch from regular programming to interval signal loop
  • 51:57 sign off transmitter Nordkirchen 549kHz
  • 53:13 sign off transmitter Thurnau 549kHz
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Ayar notes LW and MW transmitters still active in France

AM-Dial-Digital-Grundig-Mediumwave-MWIn response to our previous post about France, Germany and Luxembourg leaving the AM broadcast bands, SWLing Post contributor Ayar (HB9EVW) comments:

It is indeed a sad day for AM broadcasting. Not only Germany, France and Luxembourg, also the Czech Republic will turn off 3 MW transmitters on January 5th 2016. The three transmitters carrying the CRo Plus program are: 639, 954 and 1332 kHz.

[In the Czech Republic, there] are 2 transmitters on 693 kHz, the bigger one in “Liblice” with 750 kW will be switched off, but the smaller one in “Ostrava-Svinov” with 30 kW will remain active for now, or at least until the FM coverage is good enough for this region.

In France (including Monaco), there will still be few active LW and MW stations:

162 KHz. Allouis (France Inter)
216 KHz. Roumoules (RMC)
1467 KHz. Roumoules (TWR)
1467 KHz. Col de la Madone (Radio Maria France)
1593 KHz. St Goueno (Bretagne 5)

I am already recording some of the transmitters from Germany and France. I can receive few of them here in Switzerland even during the day.

Many thanks, Ayar. I would love to share some of your recordings on the SRAA.

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Mediumwave: France, Luxembourg and Germany go silent

france-germany

On Facebook, Mike Terry reminded me:

“Tomorrow France, Germany and Luxembourg go very quiet on medium wave.”

He’s right–there will be more empty space on the AM broadcast band for those living in or near France, Germany or Luxembourg.

I hope there are Post readers out there who might be able to make recordings of some of these stations as they go off the air.  I would like to add those recordings to the archive. Please comment or contact me if you can.

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SRAA Recording: The Happy Station Show circa 1979

Crosley-Dial-BlackAndWhiteMany thanks to Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Richard Collings, who recently submitted this amazing off-air recording of the Happy Station Show. Richard notes:

The Happy Station Show of Sunday 23rd December 1979. A pre-recorded special Christmas show with Tom Meijer. Broadcast from 0930 to 1020GMT [on 9895 kHz and received in Plymouth, Devon, UK].

Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Note that this is one of many archived off-air recordings found on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.

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