MN.30.04.1992. Newsreview

There was a lot going on the shortwave bands in April 1991.

Radio Afghanistan has been taken over and they have suspended all their external broadcasts. The Message of Freedom Radio has also been heard on 7090 kHz. Radio Georgia has been heard in English. Radio 16th of December has appeared targeting Haiti. We re-tested the Sony ICF-SW-77. We bought a new one to see whether it has really been improved. Bob Grove reports that the SR-1000 receiver has been cancelled and replaced by the SW-100 project at 800 dollars. Radio Netherlands your official information station. World Radio Network has started up on the Astra satellite. Tim Ashburner spoke to us from Wimbledon. The programme concludes with a call to Vasily Strelnikov in Moscow who notes that radio stations are sprouting like mushrooms in the rainfall from Chernobyl. 

This episode is hosted on the Media Network vintage vault

MN.07.02.1991 Mother of Battles Remembered

This programme was made a couple of weeks after Operation Desert Storm had started. After an item about Kashmir, we contacted Victor Goonetilleke to catch up on Operation Desert Storm. I think we underestimate just how up to date our monitors were. 

From Wikipedia: The Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991), codenamed Operation Desert Shield (2 August 1990 – 17 January 1991) for operations leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991) in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes. 

 

This episode is hosted on the Media Network vintage vault

MN.17.01.1991 Cry from Kaunas

Well, I believe that listening to a shortwave radio in the 80’s and 90’s was far more exciting then than now when over 120 countries had stations active on the bands. Thanks to support from a global network of listeners and monitors we were able to make weekly updates on what was being heard on the wireless. And will never forget the programme we made about the Russian invasion of Lithuania on 17th of January 1991. While the world was focusing on an invasion in the Gulf, our listening antennas we turned towards Vilnius. Towards the end of the programme, we also had a short update from the Gulf. The photo shows a Russian jamming station in Vilnius designed to block shortwave broadcasts coming from the West. 

This episode is hosted on the Media Network vintage vault

MN.02.04.1992 Falklands Retrospective

Jonathan Marks here with another dip into the Media Network vintage vault. I think, listening to shortwave radio in the 80’s and 90’s was far more exciting then than now when over 120 countries had stations active on the bands. Thanks to support from a global network of listeners and monitors we were able to make weekly updates on what was being heard on the wireless. And on anniversaries, like 10 years after the Falklands conflict in 1982, we were able to give the story much more context. I’ve been looking for this programme from 1992 for some time, but now here it is. We also asked Dr Kim Andrew Elliott to report on a meeting of International broadcast bureaucrats. We can see that the broadcasters were having problems defining their mission. And when it comes to frequencies, Jan Willem Drexhage said that at a conference in Budapest 1180 incompatibilities.    

This episode is hosted on the Media Network vintage vault

PA6FLD, ham radio from the largest antennas in the world

In February 1985, I helped to organise a rather special event over the weekend of 16th February. We broadcast live from the new Flevo transmitter site and invited ham radio operators from around the world to contact us. We were using some of the largest HF antennas in the world - 120 metres high. Today nothing remains of those giant beacons to the world having been demolished in 2019. But I like to think that for several decades more people came to know that Flevoland was the source of some very interesting programmes. This was the edition broadcast at 0930 UTC to Europe.

This episode is hosted on the Media Network vintage vault

PA6FLD Misusing a giant antenna array

35 years ago on Feb 16th 1985, a small group of radio enthusiasts "misused" the giant shortwave broadcast antennas on the new Flevo transmitting station near Zeewolde. At the weekends, the new station was off the air, the old shortwave broadcast site in Lopik being still operational. So we made a series of regular broadcasts from the Flevo station, using the transmitters at Lopik. And the engineers lashed up a special plug so we could connect ham radio gear to the new antenna masts to see how far we could be heard. It was a fantastic success, to a point where the official launch of the station a few months later was a bit of an anticlimax. This was the first transmission at 0730 UTC directed to the Pacific. 

This episode is hosted on the Media Network vintage vault