Longwave Population in Severe Decline

[Ai4i]

How many of you are aware that over the last couple of years, the vast majority of the world's longwave broadcasters have gone silent? The former Soviet Union had about fifty-five of them, now there is one in Belarus, one in Turkmenistan, and zero (or maybe one near Chechnia) in all of Russia. There are five active stations in Mongolia, three in northern Africa, and thirteen in all of Europe from Iceland to Romania. The Beeb plans to keep Radio Four rolling on 198 KHz from Droitwich (plus two synchronized, lower powered transmitters north of Droitwich) but does not plan on replacing their final stage amplifier tubes once they go. That is it, from a high of about about eighty stations down to just under two dozen and in freefall. Makes me wish I had room to put a lowfer station on the air!

 

[rbrucecarter5]

How many of you are aware that over the last couple of years, the vast majority of the world's longwave broadcasters have gone silent? The former Soviet Union had about fifty-five of them, now there is one in Belarus, one in Turkmenistan, and zero (or maybe one near Chechnia) in all of Russia. There are five active stations in Mongolia, three in northern Africa, and thirteen in all of Europe from Iceland to Romania. The Beeb plans to keep Radio Four rolling on 198 KHz from Droitwich (plus two synchronized, lower powered transmitters north of Droitwich) but does not plan on replacing their final stage amplifier tubes once they go. That is it, from a high of about about eighty stations down to just under two dozen and in freefall. Makes me wish I had room to put a lowfer station on the air!

I think we should use the LW band for digital radio. You have to buy a new radio for HD radio anyway - and except under extraordinary DX conditions, the longwave band is blank. I can't even find aircraft beacons on it anymore.

 

[CTListener]

It's unusable here for the most part, just wall-to-wall noise from electronics and power lines. I can hear a couple of beacons regularly -- MMK (Meriden-Markham Airport) and OX (Oxford Airport) -- and TUK (Nantucket) when the racket subsides, but otherwise, a vacant band. So long as the beacons are there, though, the FCC is extremely unlikely to approve broadcasting even as a secondary use.

 

[gar hi]

How many of you are aware that over the last couple of years, the vast majority of the world's longwave broadcasters have gone silent?

That really hit me when I got my Grundig G8 a few years ago and had not listened to longwave since probably the 70's.

There's virtually nothing there.

 

[KeithE4]

I think we should use the LW band for digital radio. You have to buy a new radio for HD radio anyway - and except under extraordinary DX conditions, the longwave band is blank. I can't even find aircraft beacons on it anymore.

Not practical. For one, LW broadcasting has never existed in the Western Hemisphere, so radios other than ham and SWL receivers have never existed. Second, the antenna heights would be prohibitively high, and the required radials way too long -- on the order of 1/8 mile @ 200 kHz. Third, the electronic noise in a typical house would drown out any LW signals. Even airport beacons are hard to listen to these days.

But if you ever want to experiment, the 160-190 kHz band is available, with 1 watt power input to a 15 meter antenna under Part 15. Not at all efficient, but worthy of experimentation.

 

[jim-satx]

I found the LW band to be pretty much dead whenever I would scan it with my Tecsun 660. I could only ever pick up four NDBs, most of them less than 40 miles from me.

In January I bought a Sony 7600GR and had a much different experience. It's very sensitive on LW. Between January and April, I logged 30 NDBs at home and about 20 more while in east Texas. Several were over 1,000 miles away, including DDP in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is 2,165 miles from me. I've stopped DXing the band for now because of the spring/summer static and will resume it in the fall.

If the Sony didn't have images from strong locals on LW, I'm sure I could log even more NDBs on it. I don't know of any radios currently made that match its sensitivity on the band. I've heard that the Sony ICF-2010 is even better, though.

I hope to do some fall/winter DXing on the east coast with the 7600 one day so I can snag at least one European station before they all shut down.

 

[Icangelp]

No doubt in the near future, longwave broadcasting will be long gone.

In much of the world, medium wave is or will be all but history, though India seems to be the exception. India is actively converting some AM signals to digital.

What was the phrase in Stephen King's Dark Tower books? "The world has moved on"?

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Shortwave is another endangered species. And I say again - you have to buy a new radio for HD radio - what difference does it make that HD is on another band? I can see longwave and shortwave virtually abandoned in the near future - why not re-use abandoned bands for something useful like a new digital service? AM will linger for decades. Too many ethnic broadcasters using it, too many radios.

 

[CTListener]

Shortwave is another endangered species. And I say again - you have to buy a new radio for HD radio - what difference does it make that HD is on another band? I can see longwave and shortwave virtually abandoned in the near future - why not re-use abandoned bands for something useful like a new digital service? AM will linger for decades. Too many ethnic broadcasters using it, too many radios.

HD Radio is intended to complement local FM broadcast stations. The idea is to get enough listeners to get advertisers interested. HD on shortwave will have no local audience. Its listeners, like current SWLs, will be scattered, unmeasurable and largely old and geeky. There is no use for LW or SW that can be monetized, which means Corporate America and Wall Street have no interest in seeing them survive. Maybe the government can find something to do with them, but whatever it is won't be entertainment for the masses. Might as well turn the entire spectrum over to the hams and CBers, an aging, dwindling breed in themselves.

I used to dream of being a ham, and even had a licence for a few years in high school. Now, I have no idea why anyone who isn't technically inclined would want to get into the hobby, other than for the thrill of doing something that's extremely easy with a computer -- talking to people with similar interests around the world -- in a very difficult way, just to say you've done it.

 

[Ai4i]

...why not re-use abandoned bands for something useful like a new digital service?

One has to remember wave characteristics. Digital is not robust on lower frequencies, at least not in hybrid modes. It has to be sent at low to medium bit rates and with significant error correction. A good basic example that is familiar to everyone is HDTV on low VHF channels. In other words, more can be accomplished when digital modes are kept at high VHF, still more at UHF, and the most in the low GHz bands. I personally feel that digital, GHz, and satellites is a match made at thirty six megameters (twenty two kilomiles), as close to heaven as is practical.

 

[rtc]

I think most enthusiasts have a "moth to flame" thing about Longwave...it's
something "you've always wanted to do".

Biggest problem is The Infernal Noise as many have said.

One solution is to use a loop antenna so you can null out half of it
right off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHKSYRnVYT8

You can switch in more capacitance to lower the frequency.

Add a one turn pickup loop and you can use one of these:

http://k1el.tripod.com/VLF.html

Best bets for LWBC are:

162 France
171 Tangiers (best)
189 and 207 Iceland
198 Droitwich (BBC)

I have heard all of them using a setup like the one above.It's all greyline,try right
after sunset for a couple hours.You will find fading much slower than MW.

NDB's are fading but there are some left:

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/ndb.htm

If you have the space you can get a 500 foot roll of aluminum fence wire from TSC
and do it the brute force way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yStE6sFNbYY

This guy runs a 2,000 foot longwire,has many other Youtubes using any and everything.

Regards

 

[Ai4i]

LW is not a 21'st century quality band for general purpose broadcasting, but one station on 162 KHz covers a lot more than France in the daytime and most of th EC at night, so a "Texas Sports Network" or even an "Alaskan Sports Network" would only need one transmission site. Yes, the noise level would be intolerable to today's listeners, but just think, 180 KHz is to 540 KHz as 540 is to 1620. That 50KW omni-directional CBC station on 540 would be matched by a 2KW LW station if it had an equivalent tower...unlikely.

 

[CTListener]

LW is not a 21'st century quality band for general purpose broadcasting, but one station on 162 KHz covers a lot more than France in the daytime and most of th EC at night, so a "Texas Sports Network" or even an "Alaskan Sports Network" would only need one transmission site. Yes, the noise level would be intolerable to today's listeners, but just think, 180 KHz is to 540 KHz as 540 is to 1620. That 50KW omni-directional CBC station on 540 would be matched by a 2KW LW station if it had an equivalent tower...unlikely.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that the percentage of Americans with radios capable of tuning longwave probably makes HD Radio's share look enormous.

 

[cyberdad]

The idea of a one-transmitter "Texas Sports Network" covering the entire Lone Star State is indeed interesting. But let's say...just for the sake of argument...that every home and car in Texas had access to a longwave radio. I think sooner, rather than later, the awful noise on the band would cause most listeners to tune out. When I first started going to the UK on a regular basis in the late 90s, 252 from Ireland put a respectable daytime signal into central London. Even in my hotel room. But it was downright painful to listen to. Especially for a music station. Away from the city in open areas in a car wasn't exactly a great improvement.

 

[Icangelp]

I wonder why the United States and Canada didn't encourage/authorize L W for commercial broadcasting?

 

[Ai4i]

I wonder why the United States and Canada didn't encourage/authorize L W for commercial broadcasting?

European countries have always had national radio services funded either by general revenue funds or by licensing fees or both. Those financing methods were always discouraged on this side of the pond. The FCC was ready to authorize a few major, big city AM stations to transmit with up to 500 or 750 KW until the NAB lobbied congress to limit the transmitter powers to what they are today.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

European countries have always had national radio services funded either by general revenue funds or by licensing fees or both. Those financing methods were always discouraged on this side of the pond. The FCC was ready to authorize a few major, big city AM stations to transmit with up to 500 or 750 KW until the NAB lobbied congress to limit the transmitter powers to what they are today.

I think super power would be the solution for rising levels of interference. Just overpower the interference. Of course this can only happen if the band is emptied of small, unprofitable operations. Or - if the band is massively re-allocated to allow super power on lower frequencies, and leave the overwhelming bulk of smaller local stations to an expanded graveyard band. Massive re-allocations have happened before, and AM survived them. Now, I think, superpower and re-allocation may be AM's only hope. Certainly NOT HD!

 

[davideduardo]

I think super power would be the solution for rising levels of interference. Just overpower the interference. Of course this can only happen if the band is emptied of small, unprofitable operations. Or - if the band is massively re-allocated to allow super power on lower frequencies, and leave the overwhelming bulk of smaller local stations to an expanded graveyard band. Massive re-allocations have happened before, and AM survived them. Now, I think, superpower and re-allocation may be AM's only hope. Certainly NOT HD!

We already have "superpower" broad coverage radio stations: they are on the Internet.

As to purging the "small, unprofitable" operations... that is impossible because there is no such generalized thing. Many small market AMs are doing very nicely, and providing services such as local sports and information. And there are many small market AMs that are not doing well... their revenue base has been compromised by the big box stores and the consequent loss of local ad revenue.

The same applies in larger markets. There are many "similar" situations with stations in larger markets where apparent "no ratings" stations have major revenue bases coming from serving niches. KIRN, the Farsi station in Los Angeles, is an example of such a challenged-signal facility being a significant service for several hundred thousand people... a market that is much larger than that served by many medium and high power AMs in more sparsely populated areas.

There have been only two major reallocations of radio stations. First was the FRC action of the late 20's. That was intended to reduce the number of erratically operated hobby stations as well as to eliminate channel sharing and duplication in many cases. We were talking about only a few hundred stations in any case. Then there was the early-40's NARBA reallocation, which meant no change for stations below 750 AM and only minor changes of a few channels up or down for all others; most stations kept identical or near-identical facilities. Today, with nearly 5000 AMs, how would we decide who is doing "well" or not?

Add in the fact that in the two prior reallocations, there were relatively few directional stations. Directionals are very frequency-related, and moving them elsewhere on the dial or changing their characteristics can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per station... assuming no new real estate or transmitter site moves were required.

The bigger issue is that there is no need for a new class of service irrespective of coverage. There is very limited advertiser need for regional coverage, and nearly no money for such efforts. Any possibility of payoff is way to far in the future for anyone to invest in paying off less profitable stations, getting many others to move around the dial.

 

[davideduardo]

I wonder why the United States and Canada didn't encourage/authorize L W for commercial broadcasting?

The US, from very early on, wanted to promote local radio but it might have made sense in Canada.

The bigger question would have been in regards to South America and even the European colonies in and around the Caribbean. Internal communications were very poor in most places, and LW would have allowed for good radio reception throughout most nations. Of course, the alternative of short wave was chosen as it was easy and cheap to install... a few hundred watts on a tropical band tuned into a longwire antenna achieved what longwave installations that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars could not beat.

Anecdotally, I got my first AM license for less than U$S 500 because it was for 570 kHz. Nobody wanted a low frequency due to the costs... they pretty much needed a tower and could not operate well with a longwire run between two trees or poles. And that was in the mid-60's! So there was a bias against low frequencies even on the medium wave band.

 

[davideduardo]

European countries have always had national radio services funded either by general revenue funds or by licensing fees or both. Those financing methods were always discouraged on this side of the pond. The FCC was ready to authorize a few major, big city AM stations to transmit with up to 500 or 750 KW until the NAB lobbied congress to limit the transmitter powers to what they are today.

IIRC, the biggest opponents of superpower were the networks, who did not want a single station to become a national "network" via skywave.