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VOA Demo

johntherogger

johntherogger

Frequent Participant
I just caught the demolition video of the VOA towers on YouTube. I love how stupid we are. Nothing like destroying something that could really be important one day. I guess the government figures shortwave and AM are nothing anymore?

I'm positive those great cell phones and FM stations will do just fine in an EMP.

Am I wrong here or do you guys agree? I feel like that was either a foolish decision, or planned on purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcsbny8PFZw
 
johntherogger said:
I just caught the demolition video of the VOA towers on YouTube. I love how stupid we are. Nothing like destroying something that could really be important one day. I guess the government figures shortwave and AM are nothing anymore?

I'm positive those great cell phones and FM stations will do just fine in an EMP.

Am I wrong here or do you guys agree? I feel like that was either a foolish decision, or planned on purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcsbny8PFZw
Click to expand...

VOA is available online, and has been for years. No reason to listen on shortwave anymore unless you live in one of their target areas (Africa and Asia) and speak those languages, although the African Service in English is still going relatively strong. Compared to the WW2 and Cold War days, they are a shadow of their former self, like almost all SW broadcasters not in Asia.
 
No i get that...but what happens when the internet goes out? Or becomes controlled by a country? I've always felt old fashioned over the air would be the only way to keep communications if some idiot goes haywire and brings us back to the 19th century.
 
johntherogger said:
I just caught the demolition video of the VOA towers on YouTube. I love how stupid we are. Nothing like destroying something that could really be important one day. I guess the government figures shortwave and AM are nothing anymore?
Click to expand...

Shortwave has been a non-starter for decades now. Local shortwave, once a major force in much of Africa and Latin America, is mostly gone. International services by the BBC, the Netherlands, Canada and other nations are gone. Significant SW broadcasters like HCJB closed up the huge transmission facility in Ecuador in favor of local station support

I had a commercial shortwave station license in Ecuador back in the 60's... it came with an AM I bought. I closed it, and returned the license after looking at the raw data for the ratings in the major cities of the country and not finding any evidence of any shortwave listening. While I still had it, we called it the "shitwave station".

The US government has never operated any domestic medium wave AM stations (unless you consider Radio Martí 1180 to be domestic), so we are really only talking about amplitude modulated shortwave stations, I think.

I'm positive those great cell phones and FM stations will do just fine in an EMP.
Click to expand...

It would not help to have active shortwave transmitters, as next to nobody in the US has a shortwave radio. And, increasingly, fewer and fewer people worldwide have them.

Additionally, those antennas were designed to bounce signals to Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe, etc., as the VOA was legally prohibited from serving a domestic audience.
 
johntherogger said:
No i get that...but what happens when the internet goes out? Or becomes controlled by a country? I've always felt old fashioned over the air would be the only way to keep communications if some idiot goes haywire and brings us back to the 19th century.
Click to expand...

In such a situation, stations will be built... likely high power FM or big AM stations like Radio Sawa based in Kuwait programming to the less "free" areas of the Middle East"

The real issue is whether there are receivers that can hear such stations in the average home. There sure are very few SW radios left in homes anywhere.
 
Interesting, I had no idea. I wish they had kept WLW's 500K machine together. I just get frustrated that we dont save a few things here and there...I mean you just never know.

Sure, less people have or listen to AM but it's still THERE. That's all. I get the shortwave though...that band is near total death. Make sense, just is a shame considering how it can cover the world.
 
DavidEduardo said:
The real issue is whether there are receivers that can hear such stations in the average home. There sure are very few SW radios left in homes anywhere.
Click to expand...

Outside of ham operators with HF privileges -- roughly 300,000 people out of over 300 million, with most being over age 50 -- probably next to none anymore. I don't remember any radios with shortwave (usually 6-18 MHz, covering the major broadcast bands) being sold since the '80s in large quantities, and most of those were cheap portables.

I'm not talking about ham rigs with general coverage receivers or specialty receivers used by professionals; I'm talking about consumer-grade radios. There are still a few of those being sold today -- in fact, I have one, a Grundig Satellit 750 that has one of the best AM receivers made these days -- but they're few and far between. The days of Hallicrafters and Heathkit are long gone.
 
johntherogger said:
Interesting, I had no idea. I wish they had kept WLW's 500K machine together. I just get frustrated that we dont save a few things here and there...I mean you just never know.
Click to expand...

One of the reason that the BBC has shut down Long Wave and many Medium Wave stations is that the transmitters are so old that there are no replacement "valves" for them. As the stock of tubes wears out, they turn them off as MW listening is so low it makes no sense to spend License Fee money to replace the transmitters.
 
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