Can we all just take a moment to mourn the passing of R4 on it's 198Khz broadcast service at the weekend?
I'm pretty sure some other posters have memories of this on camping trips and the like. A good chunk of my youth was spent on sailing holidays and listening to the shipping forecast each night followed by Sailing Away accompanied by the faint background hiss carries some fond memories.
I can understand why they shut it off, it's probs broadcasting to an ever deceasing audience, but still...
It's been donkeys' years since I actually listened to 198LW, but listening to the cricket in the back garden on a tiny radio, cutting away to the shipping forecast; and yeah, the 1am Shipping Forecast with Sailing Away and the national anthem. I saw a clip of the last ever broadcast, and I did feel a bit sad.
Interesting discussion on The Register about it; apparently apart from anything else the Droitwich transmitter requires huge valves that aren't available any more, hence (with the limited audience now) shutting it down and pushing everyone to FM/ BBC Sounds instead...
I mainly used LW to listen to Atlantic 252 in the early/mid 90s
Slight tangent, but the last remaining UK shortwave transmitters are just up the road from me at Wooferton near Ludlow. The multiple linked masts are quite a landmark locally. Apparently, according to Wikipedia still used to:
"broadcast shortwave radio programmes on HF 4 MHz – 26 MHz to Europe, Russia, North/Central Africa, Middle East and South America for BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, and Voice of Vietnam, among other international broadcasters. The site is also used for satellite communications and monitoring".
broadcast shortwave radio programmes on HF 4 MHz – 26 MHz
The US Navy experimented with an ELF (extremely low frequency) transmitter back in the cold war (Operation Sanguine) broadcasting on a quite unbelievable 76hz. - a wavelength of over 3,600kms! Obviously you can't stick an antenna up , so they go the other way and literally use the earth. Transmission needs megawatts apparently, but you can receive the signal literally anywhere - even sub operating depths. Very slow transmission rates of Morse code - a couple of characters every minute or so, and only the one way, obvs
Slight tangent, but the last remaining UK shortwave transmitters are just up the road from me at Wooferton near Ludlow.
Is that where they broadcast the 'numbers stations' from?? Although I know the US switched to websites for their various assets in China - which was then found/ hacked and said assets, uh, "lost"
Many happy hours up and down UK motorways listening to the sound of leather on stump.
I thought you needed secluded laybys for that sort of thing.
It is sad. I remember listening to the hitch hikers guide the galaxy on lw in my bedroom and the shipping forecast if in was saying that weekend
It’s also the source of one of my favourite stories to throw into my teaching. To illustrate that waves carry energy
Back in the day the BBC eventually accepted that at some times in winter there was an area south of the transmitter where people couldn’t get radio 4. All the complaints, on a map, pretty much lined up.
Some engineers walked along the line of no signal, starting at the transmitter. After a mile they found a huge aerial in a private garden. Following the wires from the aerial they led to an electric heater, diode and switch. So when home owner was cold they switched the fire on, powered, for free, by the lw signal. But at the cost that no one behind his house could get radio 4.
Is that where they broadcast the 'numbers stations' from??
Might be where the British ones broadcast from, but there's loads of other countries broadcasting them too. You'll need a decent radio if you want to hear them for real but there are websites which collate them and you can play back recordings of them
1500m
Living in the Ystwyth valley late 70s early 80s the only radio stations I could pick up were either Irish medium wave or R4, France Inter and Luxemburg on long wave. The quality depended on day or night, and atmospheric conditions. R4 was the last survivor, Inter and Luxemburg having gone some years back.
I loved the FM revolution which happened a few years earlier in france than the UK. Like some other places 😉 the advertising became more and more intrusive on most channels and I've ended up back listening to France Inter.
The last time I tuned into R4 was on the MW/LW radio living in the '76 T2 and Valerie Singleton was part of the team. My only connection to the UK for several years before satelite TV.
Way back in the day, I was on CB Radio, and used to chat with quite a few local people regularly. There was a wierd form of interference that was called ‘Woodpecker’, a sort of whooshing, swishing noise that would descend down through the frequencies, which allegedly was some sort of Russian OTH (Over The Horizon) system. I’d completely forgotten about it until reading this thread.
Just looked it up, and Woodpecker was a different type of interference, a sort of persistent tapping, hence the name, and it was a ballistic missile EWS.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/russian-duga-radar-woodpecker.html
Growing up on a farm in the 1960's, on the border between Westmoreland and Yorkshire , the Light Progamme, on Long Wave, which became Radio 2, was the only station we could get. Got all my "pop music" from Children's Favourites, Family Favourites and Alan Freeman's Pick of the Pops on a Sunday night. Radio 2's place on Long Wave became Radio 4 in 1978 it seems.
This sounds like people talking about the Industrial Revolution... But moi aussi. Out backpacking etc in the 1980's listening to R4 longwave and more recently (30 years ago...) in Brittany catching up on the Archers as there was no mobile reception and I was (initially) too mean to pay Orange for their extortionate Broadband. Before car radios retuned automatically on a journey, LW was the way to ensure uninterrupted listening on a long journey.
cant say it something i have an opinon, but i did see a fun "tiktock" (no pun intended) the other day, where someone had a radio on the other side of the parliment square.
They were listening to "the bongs", and were demonstrating that "the bongs" arrived at the radio (via a microphone in the tower, being transmited over the radio), noticeably before they arrived through the air across the width of the square.
Apparently, the valves used in the transmitter are no longer made, and the number of spares available make using the system feasible.
I wonder how our submariners are going to manage? LW was used as a check to see if anyone had gone nuclear!
No TMS in my car now :-(. I guess I’ll have to add bluetooth and listen from the phone. To be fair, I don’t drive it very often. Sailing by is still used to close the R4 network and there are bigger issues with R4 than loss if LW (like bye bye World Tonight!).
