Tag Archives: VOA

Clyde Haehnle: Loss of a broadcasting icon

(Source: The VOA Museum via David Snyde)

Museum Icon Passes Away

The National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting mourns the loss of one of its major leaders and benefactors. Clyde Haehnle passed away peacefully on Sunday, April 8th. Over the years, this icon in the development of broadcasting technology, not only locally but nationally, was the driving force behind the museum.

A veteran broadcasting engineer and executive, Mr. Haehnle was instrumental in the early meteoric development of Powel Crosley’s WLW. While working at WLW, fresh out of electrical engineering school at the University of Cincinnati, he was assigned in 1942 to work on design and construction of VOA-Bethany Station, the transmission facility of the newly- minted Voice of America. The facility operated from 1944 thru 1994 and beamed programs worldwide from the highest power shortwave transmitters built in the world at that time.

The rhombic antenna design requiring extensive mathematical calculations fell to Mr. Haehnle. His work accomplished with pencil, paper and a slide rule resulted in some of the most efficient antenna arrays ever built and enabled the VOA programs transmitted from the hilltop north of Cincinnati to be heard by eager listeners worldwide. P of Engineering at AVCO Broadcasting. He held many patents in electronic technology and continued to be a curious and thoughtful proponent of technology well into his ninth decade.

Mr. Haehnle’s untiring leadership and support has enabled the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting to develop into a rich educational institution celebrating the role broadcasting has made in the dissemination of programs globally encouraging democratic principles to truth-starved audiences.

The Museum plans a celebration of Mr. Haehnle’s extraordinary life later this spring.

Read more about Clyde.

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Cincinnati Society of Professional Journalists meeting at National VOA Museum of Broadcasting

Purchase an original Sony ICF-SW7600 that traveled with a VOA correspondent in the 1990s

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who notes that one of his friends is selling a radio with a little history:

[For] anyone interested in an older SONY portable with a bit of history attached (he was VOA East Europe and Jerusalem correspondent).

Thanks for the tip Dan. Now, please, someone purchase this before I do! ~~The BuyItNow price is $59.95 plus a few dollars for shipping.~~ [Either it’s a glitch on eBay or the BuyItNow price might have been removed as I published this–sorry.] I’ve never owned the original SW7600 (though I have a couple SW7600GRs).

Click here to view on eBay.

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New Crosley Exhibit at VOA Museum

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave, who shares this article by John Kieswetter at WVXU:

Maybe you have one of those refrigerators with a TV screen built into the door… Or you like reading news stories from TV/radio stations on your tablet or phone…

Well, WLW-AM founder and Cincinnati industrialist Powel Crosley Jr. was way ahead of you. W-A-Y ahead of you.

Just look around at the new Powel Crosley Jr. exhibit some weekend at the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting on Tylersville Road in West Chester Township. (For the first time, the museum is open 1-4 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday, instead of just once a month.)

In the late 1930s – 80 years ago, before the advent of television – Crosley manufactured Shelvador refrigerators with an AM radio in the door. His Shelvador was unique too – he bought the patent to have the only refrigerator with shelves on the door for years. The VOA has a Model No. 1 Shelvador which needs to be restored before put in the display.

In 1939, Crosley marketed the “Reado,” essentially a home facsimile machine that printed out news, weather and sports on a scroll about the width of toilet paper.[…]

Continue reading the full article at WVXU.

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“Go after North Korea with sanctions and short-wave radio”

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(Source: Yahoo News)

Key GOP Lawmaker: Go after North Korea with sanctions and short-wave radio

WASHINGTON — House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R.-Calif., called Wednesday for tough new sanctions on Chinese banks that do business with North Korea. Royce also said the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang has been losing its totalitarian grip on a population increasingly getting information from short-wave radio and contraband South Korean movies.

Royce said in an interview with Yahoo News on Sirius XM POTUS Channel 124 that he had met with a top North Korean defector who played up the impact of communications from the outside world as a way to pressure the government of Kim Jong Un.

“He told me that the one thing really shaking the resolve of people across North Korea is the information that’s coming in on two short-wave [radio stations] run by defectors,” Royce said. “They’re telling people what’s really going on in North Korea and in the outside world.”

The defector, Royce recalled, said, “You should help amp that up and get that all across the country.”

Voice of America and Radio Free Asia — descendants of Cold War-era information warfare — currently broadcast 10 hours per day of short- and medium-wave radio into North Korea, according to a congressional aide. And Congress doubled their Korean-language programming for the year ending Oct. 1 to $6 million, where it will stay for the next fiscal year, the aide said.[…]

Continue reading at Yahoo News…

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Editorial doesn’t mention RFE and VOA audio broadcasts

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RFE and VOA audio services are broadcast over the air and are streamed online.

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

The Washington Post’s Editorial Board put out this opinion piece this weekend entitled, “Russian propaganda has flooded U.S. airwaves. How about some reciprocity?”

I wrote to them at <[email protected]> and asked why they didn’t mention the U.S. Government’s considerable state media broadcast resources in their article.

Apparently they never heard of international broadcasting.

Maybe you could link to this article in the SWLing Post and encourage readers to write to the Washington Post’s Editorial Board to enlighten them.

It amazes me that people who work at high levels in a major U.S.-based news media outlet seem so ignorant about international broadcasting.

Thanks, Ed. It is interesting that while the article notes RFE and VOA’s TV program, Current Time (which is only available online), they fail to mention the substantial resources backing RFE/Radio Liberty and VOA’s on-air audio broadcasts that are also available to stream online.

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