GANDER RADIO
NEWFOUNDLAND, CANADA
A recording from 1972

Recently, I have been endeavouring to resurrect old reel-to-reel tapes and digitise them before they deteriorate any further. For younger readers, old magnetic tapes degrade over time for a whole variety of reasons!

I was never a big Utility DXing fan, so I only have a few Ute QSLs (see this earlier post). And in further cleaning up of all my stuff, I reclaimed some old Ute tapes, mostly from around the second half of 1972.

What never ceases to amaze me is the lack of electrical (man-made) noise and hash that we hear and take for granted nowadays. I mentioned this recently in a post several weeks ago with my 1973 recording of Radio Lara, Barquisimeto, Venezuela.

And so, this recording of Gander Radio again illustrates just how little man-made noise there was around in 1972. Atmospheric noise - yes, of course! But the hash we hear across the shortwave spectrum these days just didn't exist. And, yes, this recording was made in suburban Melbourne, Australia, about 11 km east of the Melbourne CBD.

The great circle short path distance between Gander airport and Melbourne is around 17,987 km (11,177 mi). Unfortunately, I never kept any record of the frequency, date or time of this recording other than I know it was towards the end of 1972. Anyway, in the video below, you may find this old recording of some interest.