What's left on Long Wave?

[ms660]

All sorts of reports/stats etc within this site here, not fully explored it, mainly NDB?

http://www.classaxe.com/dx/ndb/rww/stats#top

Lawrence.

[paulsherwin]

The use of LW or not mostly depends on the early evolution of radio broadcasting in the 20s and 30s. I don't think anywhere following the American 'city stations' model finished up with LW. It would actually have been a good technical solution for regional and national broadcasting in low population density countries like Australia and NZ, and even in the Americas.

[ms660]

I guess it's down to the bandwidth problem and how big a tuning capacitor/scale or number of switch positions that could be put up with.

Lawrence.

[Hartley118]

I was interested to see (in a Warsaw museum) Polish radios with only LW and FM bands. I guess that LW was optimum for national AM broadcasting in a big country.

Martin

[Station X]

More likely to stop Polish citizens listening to none Warsaw Pact Broadcasts on MW. I think they used different FM frequencies too.

Poland's LW transmitter was on 227kHz. They had MW stations too.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Hartley118

I was interested to see (in a Warsaw museum) Polish radios with only LW and FM bands. I guess that LW was optimum for national AM broadcasting in a big country.

There were similar cheap LW/FM radios sold extensively in France from the 1980s onwards, the French MW stations being also available on FM the need for MW reception just kinda faded away...

[paulsherwin]

No, this was common in France too. Imported AM/FM radios had the MW band replaced by LW because that was more popular in those markets. The French and Poles have always been very keen on LW.

[Hartley118]

Originally Posted by Station X

More likely to stop Polish citizens listening to none Warsaw Pact Broadcasts on MW. I think they used different FM frequencies too.
Poland's LW transmitter was on 227kHz. They had MW stations too.

I did wonder about Soviet constraints, but it is (just) possible to pick up Droitwich in Warsaw. Our son sometimes listens to it there on his Bush TR130!

Martin

[Junk Box Nick]

Years ago when near the French-Spanish border on the Med I found that at night I could just receive Droitwich. It was very weak but clear.

I've not studied long wave propagation but given this experience I'm astonished at how Algeria thunders in on 252 at night.

The UK is a collection of relatively small countries so I guess it was easy to cover the (pre Radio 4) Home Service regions (especially as they had regional variations) on MW with the national coverage Light Progamme on LW.

France being three times the size of the UK, it made sense to make use of LW.

[Reelman]

Back in the 60s when we travelled down to Italy through France by car we listened to Droitwich for as long as we could. With just the car radio the old Light program was receivable for nearly half the journey during daylight.
Later on I remember listening to Luxembourg on 208 in Poland just east of the East Germany border. This was the night before crossing Germany with just a transit visa so a friendly voice in English was very welcome!
Peter

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by turretslug

It seems odd that LW broadcasting wasn't more widespread around the world- I expect that the explanation is more connected with cultural/political/historical consequence than purely technical consideration.

I have always been led to believe that a major limitation in LW broadcasting was the low ratio of distance covered per watt. So to obtain a 'reasonable' coverage area, huge powers were required - and huge amounts of cash, therefore.

Of course, many years ago, it was widely believed that shorter wavelengths were unsuitable for broadcasting - and all the evidence at that time supported that belief - so LW broadcasting was seen as 'the only way to do it'.

Al.

[Alistair D]

This list gives gives quite a few stations still using LW.

http://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php

Al

[jjl]

Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick

Years ago when near the French-Spanish border on the Med I found that at night I could just receive Droitwich. It was very weak but clear.

I lived in south west France, just north of Bordeaux, a few years ago. Radio 4 on LW was receivable using a long wire there, but was quite weak.

John

[raditechman]

I spend some time in Torrevieja (near Alicante) Spain, and I listened faintly to the test matches on R4 LW when out there last summer, using just a ferrite rod aerial radio.
In a car parked in clear ground near the sea, using the car radio with a decent antenna reception was much better.

I was on a persons boat in Gibraltar harbour in 1968, and tried their on board radio connected to the boats wire aerial, the Light Programme was received on 1500m (200Khz). I think it was "Family Favourites". Good old days.

Will miss them when they are gone.

John

[hannahs radios]

Longwave in Poland in particular was a bit of a battleground they had a 200 Kw transmitter carrying polskie radio 1 on 200 Kc/s it was really a form of jamming to preventpeople there from listening to world service they also have a tx on 225 Kc/s originally 2000 Kw from konstantinow then the mast collapsed so it was replaced with a 1200Kw tx at raszyne after people objected to rebuilding the original mast.

[Dave757]

Originally Posted by WaveyDipole

I've have tried to pick up the polish radio station on 225Khz since it is of interest to me.

Hi

I am listening to 225 Khz now on my Yaesu 857 with a 1 metre square loop,
- no problems with 234, but quite a lot of fading, signals between S8 and S3.

I am in an electrically very noisy location so there is background noise,
but its certainly readable.

If I get the chance I will have a listen on the Marconi CR200 TRF
tomorrow, - at least that has got a well tuned front end!

Kind regards

Dave

[Hybrid tellies]

Here are some more stations that can be received on Long wave during the evening.
Romania on 153KHz from their Brasov 200kw transmitter can often be received with lively local music often being played.
On 279Khz you can occasionally hear Belarus during the evenings with a mix of music and speech.
On 243Khz you can hear Danish news and weather from the Kalundborg transmitter. There is only a few broadcasts a day but can be heard clearly in parts of the UK even though the transmitted power is now down to only 50Kw.
From mid evening onwards, depending on conditions, Iceland can be heard on either 189KHz or 207Khz with a variety of speech and music programs. Over the last year I have noticed that 207KHz is the stronger signal. This one is a good IF selectivity test as both signals are just alongside BBC R4 from Droitwich/Westerglen/Burghead on 198Khz.

[hannahs radios]

And a station in Czech Republic on 271 Kc/s. Power was 1500 KW, then down to 650 KW, now down to 50 KW. Lets hope it doesn't go down any more!

[Mulcher]

There was a bit of a fuss here in Ireland when the intention of shutting down the long wave RTE service was mooted a few years ago. The main argument for keeping it going was that the majority of listeners are the older of the Irish emigrants living in the UK, the older ones normally not being internet users so unable to get RTE that way. It's probably on death row however (same as the listeners!!). Vintage forum listeners not included!

[Dave757]

Hi

Better reception of Polish 225kHz signals on the CR200 TRF than the FT857,
- improved signal to noise ratio, and plenty of separation from the French
station on 234 kHz.

Kind regards

Dave