• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Radio Australia: Another one bites the dust

I remember listening to Radio Australia on my then new Realistic
Astronaut 8 radio. Sad to see the end of the service. The radio
however, still works quite well, despite being about 45 years old........
 
Using a Lafayette HA 600 attached to a wire antenna along the ceilings and hallway of a Philly basement apartment, I got into DXing short wave around 1990 for reasons that I'm fairly sure made sense at the time.
Usually, it was the 31-meter band. I even bought a plexiglass plate and little stickum strips and re-did the entire stock-issued Lafayette dial to * my * frequency-determination standards, hi.

Anyway, I spent quite a few early sunrises putting that gosh-darned dial together for Lafayette's 31-meter band. Radio Australia used to come in on 9710, 9770, 5995 and a few other frequencies here in the northeast US -- and as it was getting DAYLIGHT out!

That service will be missed, if so by only we DXers.
 
Boomed in like a local (well, as close as a station on the other side of the world could) on 9580 every morning when I was a pup and long afterward. I also used to listen to the weaker signal of VFW9 Perth, one of the ABC's regional outlets, on 9610.

Not much left now on SW other than the Bible blasters and the hams. How long does Cuba remain a presence with Fidel gone?
 
CTListener said:
Boomed in like a local (well, as close as a station on the other side of the world could) on 9580 every morning when I was a pup and long afterward. I also used to listen to the weaker signal of VFW9 Perth, one of the ABC's regional outlets, on 9610.
Click to expand...

I remember the ABC Perth station as well. IIRC, it was shut down sometime in the mid or late '80s.

Not much left now on SW other than the Bible blasters and the hams. How long does Cuba remain a presence with Fidel gone?
Click to expand...

I can still hear plenty of broadcasters on shortwave. Trouble is, I don't speak Chinese. :D
 
Another nail in the coffin for shortwave. One by one, great broadcasters are ending their transmissions. Yet Brother Stair is on 10 or 15 different channels at once!
 
crainbebo said:
Another nail in the coffin for shortwave. One by one, great broadcasters are ending their transmissions. Yet Brother Stair is on 10 or 15 different channels at once!
Click to expand...

India is rumored to be the next to shut down. Nothing heard about New Zealand, but they're not a big presence to begin with.

It looks like that, by the end of the next decade, all that'll be left on shortwave will be American religious/brokered stations, the Chinese, and maybe Cuba (depends on who's in charge by then). Everybody else seems to be calling it quits. And, yes, the BBC and VOA will follow suit in the not-too-distant future. Nobody is going to operate expensive shortwave facilities unless they think there is a potential audience of more than just a few thousand hobbyists.
 
On a purely personal level, it's sad to see R. Australia go. Many pleasant memories of hearing them early mornings on 31 meters. But it's hard to argue the "outdated" rationale for them shutting down.

One of those memories was being in Iowa on a business trip with a work colleague. Over dinner one night, somehow we got to talking about SW. He knew what it was but had never had any personal experience. So the next morning, I pulled out my YB 400 in the hotel parking lot, and gave him a demo of R. Australia on 31m, blasting in like a local! He was blown away that something coming from that far away could be so clear and so easy to tune in.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
Using a Lafayette HA 600...
Click to expand...
That was my first "worldband" receiver, which preceeded that word by a couple decades, but sadly I disposed of it at the worst possible time, just before the Iron Curtain turned to rust and South Africa was reborn. I wonder if I would have been happier with the portability of a Satillit or Transoceanic, but I do not believe those radios included all of the higher day bands which I enjoyed, when they are in, they are in. 9580 is or was good because they beam(ed) toward the mid Pacific, precisely the right direction to hit North America on their third and fourth hops. Somebody, please tell me if the 120, 90, and especially the 60 meter tropical bands are still active.
KeithE4 said:
Trouble is, I don't speak Chinese. :D
Click to expand...
这是中国广播国际广播到北美
 
ai4i said:
Somebody, please tell me if the 120, 90, and especially the 60 meter tropical bands are still active.
Click to expand...

Don't know about 120, but there are still some stations on 90 and 60, including US religious/brokered stations. The days of the multitude of Latin Americans on those bands are coming to an end, if they haven't already.

这是中国广播国际广播到北美
Click to expand...

¿Que? :D
 
ai4i said:
That was my first "worldband" receiver, which preceeded that word by a couple decades, but sadly I disposed of it at the worst possible time, just before the Iron Curtain turned to rust and South Africa was reborn. I wonder if I would have been happier with the portability of a Satillit or Transoceanic, but I do not believe those radios included all of the higher day bands which I enjoyed, when they are in, they are in.
Click to expand...

I had a TransOceanic (Royal 3000-1) and you're right, it didn't have the highest of the day bands. But there was always plenty of activity on 19 and 17 meters. Did Zenith ever put a BFO in the TransOceanic? The 3000-1 came out around 1967 and had none -- I would listen to hams by placing it next to another receiver and using the carrier it generated when tuned to the same frequency minus the IF offset.
 
KeithE4 said:
Don't know about 120...
Click to expand...

Checking short-wave.info, I find one station remaining in Brazil and three in Australia on that band. IIRC, Brazil was the biggest user of 120 meters back in the day.
 
KeithE4 said:
Don't know about 120, but there are still some stations on 90 and 60, including US religious/brokered stations. The days of the multitude of Latin Americans on those bands are coming to an end, if they haven't already.
Click to expand...

I saw the use of the 120 meter band back in about 1966 when I bought an AM/SW combo that I was able to move into a larger city. I could not find any indication of listenership in the larger local markets, and there was no money in serving the rural ones, so I returned the SW frequency to the government. I don't recall any new SW stations in ensuing years except for religious operations.

So the band started its decline in the mid-60's.
 
DavidEduardo said:


I saw the use of the 120 meter band back in about 1966 when I bought an AM/SW combo that I was able to move into a larger city. I could not find any indication of listenership in the larger local markets, and there was no money in serving the rural ones, so I returned the SW frequency to the government. I don't recall any new SW stations in ensuing years except for religious operations.

So the band started its decline in the mid-60's.
Click to expand...

You probably answered this before, but did any of those tropical band stations ever have big audiences, or were they built for the convenience of a few rural listeners (or the owner) that could afford shortwave radios? Sounds like few, if any, ever made money on their own.
 
KeithE4 said:
You probably answered this before, but did any of those tropical band stations ever have big audiences, or were they built for the convenience of a few rural listeners (or the owner) that could afford shortwave radios? Sounds like few, if any, ever made money on their own.
Click to expand...

A good case in my experience was Radio Zaracay in what was formerly called Santo Domingo de los Colorados in Ecuador. This was a higher powered 120 m band station that had rural audience all across the banana growing Andean foothills of Ecuador. It was used to advertise farm implements, transport services, vehicles and all manner of consumer goods. But a large part of its income came from "mensajes" or "messages" which were paid notes to far off listeners with no phone service.

Examples were "Attention on the El Porvenir hacienda in Puno parish of the province of Los Rios. Please take a donkey into town tomorrow at 1 PM as the boss arrives on the bus at that time". Others could indicate how much to harvest, the death of a person, a marriage or just be a "dedication" from one person to another. These messages were more expensive than agency commercials.

At one point, Zaracay may have been the highest billing station in the country. It was, for most of its most successful years, principally with short-wave only and just a low power AM for local service to the small city of Santo Domingo.

There were several other such stations in rural or agricultural areas that made a fortune. I even used my Quito AM on 590's big coverage to also sell "mensajes" and billed more from that then from paid commercial spots. For most of us, that income was all cash and might have had a hard time making it onto income statements.
 
DavidEduardo said:


A good case in my experience was Radio Zaracay in what was formerly called Santo Domingo de los Colorados in Ecuador. This was a higher powered 120 m band station that had rural audience all across the banana growing Andean foothills of Ecuador. It was used to advertise farm implements, transport services, vehicles and all manner of consumer goods. But a large part of its income came from "mensajes" or "messages" which were paid notes to far off listeners with no phone service.

Examples were "Attention on the El Porvenir hacienda in Puno parish of the province of Los Rios. Please take a donkey into town tomorrow at 1 PM as the boss arrives on the bus at that time". Others could indicate how much to harvest, the death of a person, a marriage or just be a "dedication" from one person to another. These messages were more expensive than agency commercials.

At one point, Zaracay may have been the highest billing station in the country. It was, for most of its most successful years, principally with short-wave only and just a low power AM for local service to the small city of Santo Domingo.

There were several other such stations in rural or agricultural areas that made a fortune. I even used my Quito AM on 590's big coverage to also sell "mensajes" and billed more from that then from paid commercial spots. For most of us, that income was all cash and might have had a hard time making it onto income statements.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I take it that the message income went away in time, as the rural areas were wired for phone service or got cellular service? Enough to justify shutting the shortwave transmitters down?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom