BBC revives shortwave broadcasts to Ukraine

[gr8oldies]

I got friends like that. They come to my place and see my music room with CDs and stuff and some say "My phone does all that." I remember one day someone driving drunk struck a utility pole and somehow knocked part of the cell network. My friend came over asked me if I had service and I said yes, since my flip phone was on a different carrier. She said "I can't hear my music, etc" and I said I got that solved - I just put one of my CDs in. (Although I have a music server in my home.)

We lost internet for a full weekend during a heavy snow and ice storm, and it was DVDs all weekend. The cell network was open, as opposed to our cable and home internet, but we were on a plan that throttled us after 3MB

 

[TomásEstefan]

Yes, during the 1980s, Radio Moscow was omnipresent on my shortwave dial. In terms of hours of availability to North America, the BBC World Service was no match for Radio Moscow.


How the mighty have fallen.

Quite a few of the North America directed Radio Moscow broadcasts were from Cuban based xmitters. Particularly the 40m band transmissions.

 

[radioman148]

Quite a few of the North America directed Radio Moscow broadcasts were from Cuban based xmitters. Particularly the 40m band transmissions.

There were a few on the lower end of the AM band too.

 

[davideduardo]

There were a few on the lower end of the AM band too.

I only know of one English language high-power AM/Medium Wave station from Cuba directed at the US, and it was smack in the middle of the AM band right where Radio Swan / Radio Americas and, later, Radio Martí was located.

 

[CTListener]

I only know of one English language high-power AM/Medium Wave station from Cuba directed at the US, and it was smack in the middle of the AM band right where Radio Swan / Radio Americas and, later, Radio Martí was located.

I don't remember Radio Moscow using Cuban transmitters on shortwave at all, and I was an SWL from 1966 on. The BBC used Ascension Island and, later, Canada (Sackville, NB) to pound its World Service into the Eastern US. Moscow's many frequencies never sounded as strong as the BBC's did. I'm pretty sure they were all somewhere in Europe, if not in the USSR itself.

 

[gr8oldies]

There was that Radio Moscow relay on 600. late 70s, early 80s. I also don't remember Cuban transmitters on shortwave relaying Radio Moscow.

 

[RadioFan2J3]

I don't remember Radio Moscow using Cuban transmitters on shortwave at all, and I was an SWL from 1966 on. The BBC used Ascension Island and, later, Canada (Sackville, NB) to pound its World Service into the Eastern US. Moscow's many frequencies never sounded as strong as the BBC's did. I'm pretty sure they were all somewhere in Europe, if not in the USSR itself.

Greenville VOA B-Site, up into the mid-1980s, was running BBC English World Service. I have a J-85 schedule which has BBC English on GB-5, 9515, 0030-0330UTC.

 

[TomásEstefan]

Greenville VOA B-Site, up into the mid-1980s, was running BBC English World Service. I have a J-85 schedule which has BBC English on GB-5, 9515, 0030-0330UTC.

BBC had a dedicated N. America xmitter at Antigua in the Caribbean, which usually operated on 5975 in the 49m band, heard every where in N. America after local sunset, Late afternoons BBC leased about an hour of time on the religious SW station in Okeechobee, Fl. on a freq in the 25m band. And for those of us on the West Coast, BBC leased about an hour of time in the early evening on the VOA xmitter at Delano, Ca on 6135 kHz in the 49m band. This signal compaired to most other SW stations seemed strong enough to power a small car in my location, absolutely local, at least 5mV on occasion.

 

[TomásEstefan]

There was that Radio Moscow relay on 600. late 70s, early 80s. I also don't remember Cuban transmitters on shortwave relaying Radio Moscow.

The Radio Moscow broadcasts from Cuba were on several freqs in the 40 m Band. As you may know 7100 to 7300 kHz is allocated in N. America exclusively for Amateur Radio. In the rest of the world it can be used for broadcasting. In later years 7300 to 7500 was added just for broadcasting use. Back in the day Hams amused themselves by "zero-beating" their signals right on top of R. Moscow!

 

[CADXER]

Radio Moscow never used shortwave transmitters in Cuba for the English/Spanish/Portuguese language broadcasts to the Americas.

The only shortwave Radio Moscow transmission from Cuba was in Russian language on 4765 kHz. It was assumed at that time (around 1989) that those transmissions were directed at Russian military personnel and workers in Cuba. I have a QSL card from Radio Moscow stating the transmitter location as Havana, Cuba.

As noted above Radio Moscow did use high power Medium Wave transmitters in Cuba to broadcast Radio Moscow to the US. Back in 1981 Radio Moscow North American Service could be heard on car radio on 600 kHz in downtown Chicago. I have a QSL card for that one as well.

 

[davideduardo]

There was that Radio Moscow relay on 600. late 70s, early 80s. I also don't remember Cuban transmitters on shortwave relaying Radio Moscow.

I was living in Miami in 1981 and managing a Spanish language station in the market then. I don't recall the relay on 600, although in Miami that would have been rather buried beneath WIOD on 610. I also participated the the "Cuban Radio Professionals in Exile" group (honorary non-Cuban member recognized for anti-Castro work) and the subject never came up.

On top of that, I was a DXer. It's funny that I have no recollection of the 600 AM Radio Moscow transmissions. How long did they last?

 

[RadioFan2J3]

BBC had a dedicated N. America xmitter at Antigua in the Caribbean, which usually operated on 5975 in the 49m band, heard every where in N. America after local sunset, Late afternoons BBC leased about an hour of time on the religious SW station in Okeechobee, Fl. on a freq in the 25m band. And for those of us on the West Coast, BBC leased about an hour of time in the early evening on the VOA xmitter at Delano, Ca on 6135 kHz in the 49m band. This signal compaired to most other SW stations seemed strong enough to power a small car in my location, absolutely local, at least 5mV on occasion.

The BBC programming on VOA transmitters weren't hourly leases in the conventional sense, dollars for transmitter hours, but more swaps of transmitter hours, particularly for the hours of transmitter time for VOA on BBC transmitters particularly Wooferton.

I looked again at the J-87 schedule I have and bear in mind, any VOA transmitter schedule was only as good as the moment it was printed out. BBC Spanish at Delano on this schedule was:

DL-7 11820 kHz 0230- 0430 UTC
DL-8 6055 kHz 0230- 0430 UTC

Bethany had a BBC English schedule:

BY-6 9590 kHz 0030-0230 UTC
BY-6 9515 kHz 0230-0330 UTC

Greenville had no BBC on that J-87 schedule.

I don't have any copies of the transmitter schedules for Greenville for the early 1980s, but I thought we had at least two or three of the Site B transmitters running BBC World Service.


One other little tidbit regarding the BBC programming on the VOA stateside transmitters, prior to the satellite program circuits, the VOA receiver site at Greenville would use the RCA dual diversity program receivers for the program feeds for the BBC World Service and BBC Spanish service. I distinctly recall feeding the BBC Spanish on the microwave up to Washington to go to the Delano transmitters, but not the English. I suspect by the 1987 schedule, BBC programming might have been on satellite feeds and Greenville was no longer in the BBC program feed via HF radio. Probably, VOA Washington Master Control had the program downlinks for the BBC.

 

[Mediafrog+]

I don't remember Radio Moscow using Cuban transmitters on shortwave at all, and I was an SWL from 1966 on. The BBC used Ascension Island and, later, Canada (Sackville, NB) to pound its World Service into the Eastern US.

I also started SWLing in 1966. The BBC broadcasts to North America were direct from the UK back then, but there was some secondary coverage from what was then the brand new Ascension Island relay station. The Antigua relay station (which was shared with Deutsche Welle) went in the air in 1975 and became the primary gateway to NA, with some secondary coverage from Sackville and Ascension. There were still a number of UK originated frequencies audible in NA, though not directed our way.

Moscow's many frequencies never sounded as strong as the BBC's did. I'm pretty sure they were all somewhere in Europe, if not in the USSR itself.

In the late 1960s-early 1970s Radio Moscow actually had two program schedules directed at NA. Eastern and central parts of NA were covered by transmitters in the European part of the USSR, and the Pacific Coast service, which went out several hours later, originated from transmitters in the Soviet Far East.

The east coast service ran from 2200 to 0700 UT. The west coast service had the same programs on a several hour delay but I don’t recall the exact hour span—I would have to dig through my SW archive stuff.

I don’t recall any Radio Moscow programs transmitted from Cuba on shortwave. However the Cubans did have Radio Moscow in English on 1040 kHz sometime in the 1980s which caused a lot of grief to WHO.

 

[radioman148]

I was living in Miami in 1981 and managing a Spanish language station in the market then. I don't recall the relay on 600, although in Miami that would have been rather buried beneath WIOD on 610. I also participated the the "Cuban Radio Professionals in Exile" group (honorary non-Cuban member recognized for anti-Castro work) and the subject never came up.

On top of that, I was a DXer. It's funny that I have no recollection of the 600 AM Radio Moscow transmissions. How long did they last?

It was there on 600 and some nights quite strong in the midwest. I could hear it on my car radio.

 

[KeithE4]

It was there on 600 and some nights quite strong in the midwest. I could hear it on my car radio.

I don't remember hearing it in suburban Chicago either.

 

[gr8oldies]

It was there on 600 and some nights quite strong in the midwest. I could hear it on my car radio.

I was in Sarasota for First Phone Wonder School (REI) and clearly remember Radio Moscow on 600. (also having heard it in Ohio.) It started at 3pm Eastern and ran all evening, and possibly overnight, though I never heard the end. Before 3pm was one of the Cuban national networks. I have been told 600 ran Radio Havana Cuba in English after Radio Moscow signed off, bit I didn't hear it first hand nor have I been able to corroborate it. The audio sounded like it came from shortwave. If the North American service didn't start until 5pm Eastern, I'm not sure what service we'd have been listening to. I never heard the 1040 but 600 had aa decent daytime signal in Sarasota, and it was easily heard in Ohio at night.
Fun Fact since we're talking about relays. During the Vietnam War, Radio Habana Cuba relayed The Voice of Vietnam (inaccurately referred to on US newscasts as "Radio Hanoi") at the end of their English broadcasts. A script was sent from Hanoi to Havana by teletext and the script was read by RHC announcers.

@DavidEduardo , Google found a page from a SPEEDX bulletin on your site listing regional Soviet shortwave loggings. https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/I...-IDX/IDX/90s/Speedx-1990-05-OCR-Page-0025.pdf

 

[CADXER]

Here is a list of SW and MW transmitter sites that were used by Radio Moscow. This list by no means complete as I remember they also used high powered SW transmitters in Ukrainian SSR (Mikolaev) and Moldavian SSR (Maiac). Radio Moscow was good verifier and they included transmitter sites on their QSLs if requested. However in many cases they were fictional sites or they listed nearby cities instead of the actual location. For example the Mikolaev site used to be verified as Simferopol or Vinnitsa and there were many such cases.

Back in 1970's and 1980's Roger Legge used publish the USSR High Frequency Newsletter, which used to report on the various sites (real or fake) used by Radio Moscow. This used to be a good guide for us trying to verify as many transmitters as we could. I went through my QSL collection last night and counted 52 different SW transmitter sites that I QSLed by Radio Moscow. Here is a sample of one of the newsletters: http://www.ontheshortwaves.com/Newsletters/UHN-30.pdf

Here is the list of transmitter sites from the Military-History web site Voice of Russia:

The transmission network consisted of at least 30 high-power transmission sites (West to East, with first transmission dates):

• Wachenbrunn, East Germany (1000 kW carrier power, MW)
• Bolshakovo (2500 kW carrier power, MW)
• Saint Petersburg (1961) [16 × 200 kW SW]
• Moscow (5 known high-power SW transmission sites)
• Krasnodar (1967) [8 × 100 kW SW, 8 × 500 kW SW]
• Volgograd
• Kamo, Armenia (site ceded to Armenia, but operated by RMOC)
• Samara [6 × 250 kW SW, 3 × 200 kW SW, 7 × 100 kW SW]
• Yekaterinburg [9 × 100 kW SW]
• Tashkent (1000 kW carrier power?)
• Dushanbe (1000 kW carrier power)
• Omsk
• Novosibirsk (1956) [17 × 100 kW SW, but 1000 kW carrier power capable]
• Irkutsk (Angarsk, 1971) [2 × 100 kW, 4 × 250 kW SW, 8 × 500-kW)
• Chita
• Yakutsk
• Vladivostok (1000 kW carrier power?)
• Komsomolsk-on-Amur
• Petropavlovsk-Magadan (1000 kW carrier power?)
• Havana, Cuba at one time in 1980, Radio Moscow had transmissions on the Medium Wave broadcast on 600 kHz from Cuba which reached the Caribbean islands and US State of Florida

 

[bigdonho]

This is hardly a "bean counter" issue. Most shortwave in the last 60 years has fallen into three categories:

1. Local (tropical band) SW, intended for regional coverage in nations like Brazil, Ecuador, Perú and Bolivia in our Hemisphere. As more and more smaller towns got thier own local stations, the need disappeared in favor of better signals from local broadcasters.
2. Religious stations like TWR and HCJB. Not news sources, and gradually declining in favor of local "affiliates"
3. Government agencies. VOA, BBC, DW, CBC, etc.

The government agencies have to work within budgets. As the need for better local stations increased, the money for national and international ones was cut. The need for a local station in West Twinkleberry overcame the need for a national service. And the Twinkleberrians vote in elections, something that is well recognized in all democratic nations.

Actually the BBG (whatever their name is now) has been cutting the hours and budget of shortwave for years in favor of more money for the Internet and local placement of programs. They say shortwave is too expensive.

However, the first things despots due is shut down the Internet and take off the air any station broadcasting VOA programming. Shortwave radio was, until recently, a thing in most of Europe and espacially on the East. Almost all radios had long wave, medium wave, FM and short wave bands. Shurely there are enough of those radios hanging around.

Just because they have broadband and cable TV in DC doesn't mean it's available in the rest of the world.