May 13, 2012
This programme starts with the news about Chris Carey was caught in New Zealand connected with pirate decoders. There's a rather ironic item about public service broadcasting. Steve Whitt generated a nice response about earthing rods. Feb 1st was a landmark day in the end of Morse Code for maritime use. We talked about a Atlantic Hop experiment using Morse Code and involving the old Kootwijk shortwave site in Holland. We also looked at why Radio Luxembourg is still remembered, even though its been off the air for years. Shaun Tilley talked to us from Swansea. He argues that Luxy hasn't really been replaced. There are also the results of the Christmas contest to guess how many hits we had on RNW.nl in 1998. Alan J Knapp got my 1999 copy of the WRTH.
208m/1440kHz MW had a very nice tribute treat on 30th December last year;RTL repeated the English Service closedown programme from 30th December 1992 in a edited cut down version of two hours and five minutes from midnight UK/01.00 CET ending with the Luxembourg National Anthem at 2.05 UK/03.05 CET and they also repeated it for two hours during the day of New Year's Eve on 208m/1440kHz.
Power was on the German day aerial at 300kW erp;the midnight UK/01.00 CET broadcast was apparently transmitted with the directional passive reflectors disconnected in an omnidirectional pattern, cutting back in towards the end of Marion Montgomery's Maybe The Morning track and a quick skywave fade before the Luxembourg National Anthem closed the transmission and the transmitter was switched off.
The 208/1440 transmitter was finally closed down for good on 31st December 2015 at midnight UK/01.00 CET, and the remaining reflectors and omnidirectional antenna have been brought down early February and transmitter buildings cleared.
R.I.P. RTL 208/1440, you served us well, RTL might have taken you away but we still have the memories.
PS There was a plan by RTL/CLT/bce)) to transmit 208m/1440kHz from another transmitter site but this was scuppered.
The UK night aerial on the right hand side of the picture (omnidirectional antenna and directional triangular passive reflector) has been demolished by bce)).
The Germany day aerial on the left hand side of the picture (omnidirectional antenna and two directional triangular passive reflectors) only exists now and power has been reduced to 300kW erp directing most of it's signal at Germany with an attenuated weaker skywave reflected west-north-west towards the United Kingdom after dark.
In the days of Radio Luxembourg during the day, the day aerial at 600kW erp was mainly used to beam the German programme to Germany and at around 18.00 UK/19.00 CET, both day and night aerials' 600kW transmitters were connected together in parallel for a combined power of 1,200,000 watts=1200kW in real terms to broadcast to the UK and a good part of Europe;
18.00 UK the Dutch/multilingual programme with Mike Verdrengh (it was a pan-european style radio show with letters,dedications and requests in various european and international languages),
18.30 UK Qui Italia! would follow for Italians living outside Italy in other parts of Europe,
then at 18.45 UK the German religeous programme would make a nice run up to the English Service at 19.00 UK/20.00 CET until closedown at 3am UK/4am CET when the night aerial would be disconnected and the day aerial would be switched back in at 600kW for the German Service before total switch off and sign on at 03.50 UK/04.50 CET with the familiar musical box interval signal on the Germany day aerial.
I agreed with Shaun Tilley and he WAS correct in what he said;NO station has EVER succeeded Luxy nor replaced it nor has anything succeeding it been quite as good as it-Luxy had a massive european and international audience AND set the standard and raised the bar for international radio broadcasting.