BC-DX TopNews WWDXC #945 BC-DX 945

Nacional Arcangel San Gabriel may also be active on other weekdays.
Trouble is, there is another carrier at least as strong around 15478 kHz,
and even stronger 15480 in Belarussian, Poland via Woofferton UK at
1300-1430 UT.
(Glenn Hauser-OK-USA, dxld Apr 22)
AUSTRALIA As I listen to RA on 9580 kHz, they just made an announcement
stating that their Shepparton TX site would be down for maintenance. This
will impact broadcasts to SEA and the Pacific between the hours of 5am and
1pm Bangkok time.
(S McLean, dxld Apr 22)
AUSTRIA ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST by Andrew Tett.
The Detonation of the Wien-Bisamberg MW Transmitter in Austria (This
article was inspired by a thread featured in the German DX Magazine
Reflexion)
Among those "Cold War" buzz-words and phrases that entered our
consciousness during the 1980s, Russian words like "glasnost" (openness
and freedom) "perestroika" (economic restructuring) and the French word
"detente" (relaxation of tensions), the one that seems strangely to have
been quietly forgotten is "The Peace Dividend." This was the basic premise
that all the money that used to be spent defending us from our enemies
could be spent on more fruitful, peaceful activity. I doubt if any of us
DXers who heard these three words bandied about at that time realised the
effects that "the benefits of peace" would have on our hobby.
For a start, the changed relations between nation states meant that some
external service operations were no longer seen as important as they once
were. Countries that kept their people informed by way of state-run
monopoly broadcasters also suddenly started embracing “free market
reforms” and their citizens could get relatively reliable sources of
information from their local radio stations at last. Maintaining a network
of power-hungry transmitters for the broadcast of crossborder information
or propaganda (depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you were)
became seen as unnecessary.
Just one of those trusted cross-border sources of information in Europe
during the period of the Cold War was the OeRF – Oesterreicher Rundfunk.
Its German language transmissions could be understood by millions of
people across Eastern Europe. The main domestic transmitter in Austria was
sited just outside Vienna at a place called Bisamberg. For Austria, with
its well-developed FM network, the broadcasting of a 600 kW AM signal from
this site was an obvious potential contribution to their own Peace
Dividend. Bisamberg started its life as Austria's largest transmitter in
May 1933. With 100 kW radiated from two masts, its first twelve years of
service continued through the war until retreating Nazi SS Troops decided
to destroy their "Reichssender" Linz (at that time on 1267 kHz) and felled
the masts - for the first time.
American troops seeing its importance to the region rebuilt the station
however, and in 1950 transmissions resumed once again from the site. By
1959, with two new masts the transmitter was able to radiate an output
power of 120 kW. There are tales during this period of people living near
the transmitter powering small house lights with the signal that they
received from the transmitter.
file:///Z|/DOKUMENTATION-BULLETINS/WWDXD-BCDX/2010/BCDX961.TXT[11.06.2012 10:40:02]