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Radio Australia: Another one bites the dust

120 meters will also go dead along with Radio Australia - all three of the ABC Northern Territory stations (2315, 2325, 2485 khz) are gone after 1/31/2017. Those were good beacons to trans-pacific DX on MW/AM.
 
Is it possible that large swaths of shortwave spectrum will be turned over to hobbyists -- either two-way ham radio or amateur broadcasting -- as they fall into disuse, by international agreement? Or will there always be "utility"-type users of the spectrum even if the last of the broadcasters call it quits? Is there still much long-haul aeronautical or maritime traffic on shortwave?
 
CTListener said:
Is it possible that large swaths of shortwave spectrum will be turned over to hobbyists -- either two-way ham radio or amateur broadcasting -- as they fall into disuse, by international agreement?
Click to expand...

It's possible, but not very likely. Somebody somewhere -- likely the American religious outfits and/or the Chinese -- will want to use that spectrum for broadcasting.

Or will there always be "utility"-type users of the spectrum even if the last of the broadcasters call it quits? Is there still much long-haul aeronautical or maritime traffic on shortwave?
Click to expand...

I think there's some, but I don't know how much.
 
What's the point of all of these religious broadcasters going there if there's no one available to listen?

KeithE4 said:
It's possible, but not very likely. Somebody somewhere -- likely the American religious outfits and/or the Chinese -- will want to use that spectrum for broadcasting.



I think there's some, but I don't know how much.
Click to expand...
 
Soon enough the SW band will be nothing but static. I know HF is used as a backup for military comm's, and there are HF aeronautical services. But you don't hear those comm's unless you tune in right when one is happening.

Ships at sea used to depend on HF, but all their comm's are satellite anymore. Some smaller outfits (fishing boats, etc.) still use HF.

If you want to listen to international broadcasts, you'll have to stream. And hope that some day they aren't geo-blocked.

I remember when the 31 meter band was packed with signals most afternoons and evenings. Now I'm lucky if I hear 4 or 5 stations on a radio that is much higher tech (and more sensitive and selective) than the ones I used back when.
 
Soon, there won't be a "49 meters" or a "31 meters". Just ham communication on 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10m. But there are still some people that absolutely rely on SW...and I don't mean Brother Stair's sermons.
 
HF is good communications platform for people in rural parts of the world,
including population-challenged islands,
but those broadcast bands would need to be realocated.

I have no idea what ever became of All India Radio's plan to create a domestic service, using Digital Radio Mundial on HF.
Frequency, spacial, and time diversity technology would be a requirement for me.
DRM works well on HF on its first hop.
 
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ai4i said:
I have no idea what ever became of All India Radio's plan to create a domestic service, using Digital Radio Mundial on HF.
Click to expand...

Apparently they are doing it on MW.
 
http://allindiaradio.gov.in/Oppurtunities/Tenders/Documents/DRM Transmission in Short Wave281016.pdf


http://allindiaradio.gov.in/Oppurtunities/Tenders/Documents/DRM Medium Wave update 02112016.pdf

DRM is something I want to play with via shortwave at home....

dave


ai4i said:
HF is good communications platform for people in rural parts of the world,
including population-challenged islands,
but those broadcast bands would need to be realocated.

I have no idea what ever became of All India Radio's plan to create a domestic service, using Digital Radio Mundial on HF.
Frequency, spacial, and time diversity technology would be a requirement for me.
DRM works well on HF on its first hop.
Click to expand...
 
ai4i said:
Thanks for the links
DRM is a wonderful technology that is taking much too long.
Click to expand...

It would run into the same problem here that HD has -- nobody wants to buy a new radio and you can't even FIND new standalone HD radios at most non-specialty stores these days. They're not stocked because sales had dropped to the point that it didn't make sense to clutter the shelves with them.
 
"What's the point of all of these religious broadcasters going there if there's no one available to listen?"

I think they have plenty of listeners (as evidenced by the donated money that keeps them on the air). Unfortunately, they are not the demographic that encourages commercial broadcasting, especially to the extent that a RA, RNW or BBC-type operation provides.
 
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"It would run into the same problem here that HD has -- nobody wants to buy a new radio and you can't even FIND new standalone HD radios at most non-specialty stores these days. They're not stocked because sales had dropped to the point that it didn't make sense to clutter the shelves with them. "

Seems like the remaining Radio Shack stores are still selling a lot of the little "pocket" radios that include SW. I wonder if folks like Sangean would consider adding an A-to-D converter and output of digitized wideband, so you could run an app on your phone to get DRM decoding. The radio would just be your SW demod and digitizer.
 
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kenglish said:
"What's the point of all of these religious broadcasters going there if there's no one available to listen?"

I think they have plenty of listeners (as evidenced by the donated money that keeps them on the air). Unfortunately, they are not the demographic that encourages commercial broadcasting, especially to the extent that a RA, RNW or BBC-type operation provides.
Click to expand...

I agree.

If you take a look at a couple of the religious broadcasters' websites, they do have listeners in the former Third World. At least TransWorld Radio claims to have listeners there -- enough to be able to sell the idea of HF broadcasting to their supporters.

In their world's view, even if they reached a handful of listeners a day in areas that are off limits to internet or local FM carrying their programming, it's worth it to them.

Obviously, it's not everybody's cup of tea. But it keeps the HF bands alive, along with China, Romania, Japan, Cuba, and North Korea.... and a few others.
 
I forgot about Romania! Yeah, Radio Bucharest is still there, with its old-school mix of programming so familiar to SWLs of generations past: news, commentary, folk music, a weekly mailbag show. I wonder why they continue on SW long after most other government broadcasters have left?
 
CTListener said:
I forgot about Romania! Yeah, Radio Bucharest is still there, with its old-school mix of programming so familiar to SWLs of generations past: news, commentary, folk music, a weekly mailbag show. I wonder why they continue on SW long after most other government broadcasters have left?
Click to expand...

Perhaps it's just as cheap for them to keep it on the air as it would be to close it down, and have no world presence on a worldwide based media. At least on HF (and a lot of the Third World still tunes into HF broadcasting) Radio Romania Int'l a major player. And if their government owns the electrical supply, maybe power costs are lessened.

Cuba does the same thing. They obviously have listeners in South America -- maybe more listeners than the number of people searching for Cuban info on Cuban websites.

Perhaps it's the same with Romania. It's undoubtedly a great country, but has a low overall media presence worldwide. Radio Romania International fulfills that purpose, probably to the Third World.

HF is a worldwide medium, just like the internet. And just because one has an internet site doesn't mean you have viewers. The internet is cheaper, perhaps, but it's very easy for a website to get lost in the vast internet static.

On HF, especially nowadays with so few stations, you can be a major player much more easily, and if propagation is good, it can sound better than it used to. Back in the 80's and earlier, it was heterodynes galore. And on a cheaper radio back then, sometimes stronger stations would completely swamp weaker adjacents. Not any more.
 
My original concept of what satellite radio would become, as I watched "Our World" one Sunday in late June of 1967, was that international broadcasters would soon penetrate national borders, not single companies being licensed to provide domestic programming to paying subscribers, and not thirty-five years down the road. The closest thing we have had to that occurred when the British company, World Radio Network (a dead link) aired on 1Worldspace and on Sirius, then SiriusXM, but most of the stations they chose to offer were very western. They caried several European stations, but zero from Latin America, one from Africa, only the southern Korea, and the least representative of all middle eastern countries.

DRM could offer a similar service on first hops, but the receiving antennæ are inefficient and inconveniently large.
 
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