HAMS HONOUR BROADCASTERS
FROM THE PAST

This extended blog post first appeared in the April 2024 issue of The Spectrum Monitor magazine. Further details on this excellent publication are available at www.thespectrummonitor.com

During one weekend in March 2020, a group of amateur radio operators in my home state of Victoria, Australia, had the privilege of hooking up their ham transceivers to the big curtain arrays at Radio Australia's Shepparton transmitter site. A unique call sign, VI3RA, was granted, and the group had much fun making contacts worldwide with the maximum legal 400 watts. Once connected to the big RA antennas, they are said to have achieved gains of more than 15 dB!

At that time, the station had only been off-air for three years (the last RA broadcast was on January 31, 2017), but it felt like a fitting tribute to the broadcaster that had given so much pleasure to millions globally for decades. In the last few months, I have also observed the honouring of several other now-defunct broadcasters.

This surprise QSL from a Dutch ham station with the unique callsign PD50VOP is a 50^th-anniversary tribute to the off-shore broadcaster Voice of Peace. As well as providing the usual details of our FT8 QSO, the back of the card offers a short history of the station and its founder, Abie Nathan.

Voice of Peace - Off-shore Radio

Recently, I received a pleasant surprise in the mail with a ham QSL card from PD50VOP for a digital QSO (FT8) we made a few months earlier. The card marked the 50th anniversary of the start of broadcasts from the off-shore radio station, the Voice of Peace. This unique call sign was allocated to an active Dutch ham, Arie Rietveld PD0ARI.

Before receiving his ham ticket, Arie was an active shortwave and mediumwave listener during the 1970s. So, he has had a lifelong love affair with radio! The great thing about his QSL card is it reminded me of a broadcaster I had not thought about since it had disappeared from shortwave. Arie’s PD50VOP page on QRZ.Com describes how he remembers the station:

“The Voice of Peace was an offshore radio station anchored in the Mediterranean Sea, near the Israeli coast. It was founded by Abie Nathan, an Israeli philanthropist and peace campaigner. He used this offshore radio station to bring peace messages throughout the Middle East. The station was bringing popular music and lots of peace messages/jingles, mostly presented live from the radio ship. The Voice of Peace had millions and millions of listeners from the Middle East to southern Europe. The station started on the 26th of May 1973 and stopped on the 1st of October 1993. On November the 28th, 1993, the Peace Ship was sunk in the Mediterranean Sea. We will never forget The Voice of Peace and the memorable man Abie Nathan!!”

The reverse side of the QSL

The QSL I received prompted me to research a little further into the station’s history. VOP broadcast on both AM (1539 kHz but announced as 1540 kHz) and FM (100 MHz) during the 70s. Although the ship boasted two 25 kW MW transmitters combining to give potentially 50 kW output, it usually ran around 35 kW and later between 10 and 25 kW. The FM transmitter was 20 kW.

It was not until July 27, 1983, that VOP began shortwave services on 6240 kHz. It soon left that band in March 1984 on orders from the Israeli Ministry of Communications because of a received complaint of interference. The 400-watt SW transmitter was not always easy to hear in North America, but logs showed that the best time was around 0000 UTC. Programming was mainly in English, with short segments in Hebrew, Arabic and French.

Along with the QSL, I received this distinctive blue and white anniversary bumper sticker designed in the same style as stickers the Voice of Peace distributed to listeners in the 1980s. The Dutch ham also thoughtfully included a small packet of Netherlands postage stamps.

A fascinating YouTube video called “Rebel Radio Ships” discusses how the Voice of Peace and Radio Caroline influenced broadcasting in the 1970s and 1980s. Produced by Al Jazeera World, it features fabulous footage of both ships, their studios, and transmitters. Another three-minute video on YouTube, “The Voice of Peace in the Mediterranean, “ has excerpts of VOP jingles and station IDs.

Radio Luxembourg

While tuning across the ham bands last December, my interest was piqued by the call LX90RTL. Knowing that LX is the amateur prefix for Luxembourg and having been familiar with the letters RTL for Radio Television Luxembourg, I decided to investigate further.

My first stop was, again, at QRZ.COM, where I discovered that 2023 marked the start of 90 years of broadcasting from Radio Luxembourg. On March 15, 1933, the station began its first regular broadcasts in the long-wave band from the transmitter at Junglinster, about 14 km NE of the Luxembourg capital.

The directional antenna consisted of three free-standing towers, each 250 meters high, on 234 kHz. At the time, this was one of the most powerful transmitters in the world. Curiously, it was discovered that, under certain conditions, the signal could cause cross-modulation interference with other radio stations by ionospheric reflection. A powerful transmitter in the Russian city of Gorky (now known as Nizhny Novgorod) produced a similar effect, and the phenomenon is called “The Luxembourg-Gorky Effect”.

This commemorative LX90RTL ham QSL shows the three massive long-wave antennas of Radio Luxembourg marking its 90^th anniversary of broadcasting to Europe.

Radio Luxembourg was also a popular shortwave station in Europe. The two frequencies used were 6090 and 15350 kHz, with 6090 being very well heard throughout Germany and surrounding countries. I remember logging the station here in southeastern Australia in the early mornings during the winter of 1971. Unfortunately, the QSL I received disintegrated in the 1990s because of water damage to part of my collection. The shortwave transmitter was eventually shut off at 0300 UTC on December 30, 1991.

The mediumwave outlet operated on 1440 kHz from Marnach, Luxembourg, finally closing down at 2259 UTC on December 31, 2015. And, on January 1, 2023, the longwave transmissions were closed. On YouTube, the Retro Tech Restorations channel has more on RTL’s history and discusses the closure of the longwave service.

The team of 12 Luxembourg hams was permitted to operate with the special LX90RTL call sign from July 1 to December 31, 2023, using phone, CW, and digital modes from different locations in the country. At the conclusion of the project, they had accumulated 27,922 QSOs during the six months of operations.

73 and good DX to you all,

Rob Wagner VK3BVW