Showing posts with label radio netherlands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radio netherlands. Show all posts

10 May 2012

Radio Nederland and shortwave broadcasts

One of my favorite shortwave broadcast stations back in the 1960s was Radio Netherlands . I still have my QSL card from them somewhere. When testing my shortwave crystal set today I noticed a strong transmission of the Dutch language service today in the 31m band. Little did I realise (until tonight) that this is the very last day ever of transmissions in their worldwide Dutch language service.

The HF broadcast scene is quite a lot different from when I last seriously listened some years ago: there are far fewer English language services to be heard. I guess these days people who want to find out about different countries listen to broadcasts on the internet.

Also, the CW maritime services, which could be perfectly copied sometimes on a crystal set as a result of cross-modulation (the CW sounded like a raspy hiss keyed) are long gone. One of my interests some years ago was seeing how many HF marine coast radio stations I could positively ID on a simple crystal set: the answer was quite a few around western Europe.

In fact SWLing on HF is rather a dying scene I think, although devotees will no doubt disagree.