ARLA/CLUSTER: Radioamadores alemães operam antigo emissor da Radio Deutsche Welle reconvertido alugando por 15 €/Hora

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Amateur radio based group rescues released broadcast frequency

When the 'Deutsche Welle' decided to close down one of their 500 KW
short wave broadcast transmitters near Munich at the end of 2012, a
group containing some German radio amateurs applied for and were
allocated the then available short wave frequency of 6070 KHz in 2013.

This group now have an operational 10KW station on the frequency,
using the driver stages from the old Deutsche Welle transmitter. The
rest of the transmitter was built by and is run by Rainer DB8QC . The
licence allow transmission 24/7 but at present most transmissions are
on a weekend during daylight hours.

Content is mainly provided by existing Internet Radio stations wanting
to get their material "on-the-air" this includes several soceities
that remember the days of the Pirate Radio pop music stations in the
North sea between England and Holland and a lot of their music content
is from the 60's and 70's.

Additional content is being sought and at only 15 Euros an hour, this
is not a corporate big business rather a facility where smaller groups
can afford to buy time to transmit their content. One such group is
the Deutsche Amateur Radio Club, the National Amateur Radio Soceity in
Germany, who hope to have a weekly 2 hour slot on the station from
mid-March to send a DX orientated program, probably from 6pm local
time on Sundays.

The DARC DX magazine will be in the German language and targeted
towards German speaking listeners. Amateur radio is an international
medium however so there are thoughts of also producing an
international / English hour in addition, to reach out across Europe
not only to radio amateurs but also to short wave listeners and the
general public.

When I talked with another Rainer DF2NU who is one of the group
running the station and the president of the Munich South section of
the DARC, he told me that they hope to be able to broadcast more often
once sufficient content is available however they are already seeing
other broadcasters such as Radio China moving onto the frequency in
the evenings as those stations percieve 6070 KHz as a free frequency.

Rainer told me that currently "Channel 292" has airtime bookings for
20-25 hrs a week, mostly on weekends at which times it runs at 10 kW
output. When the station is idle (as there is no booking), the
transmitter power is reduced to 1kW and transmits an infinite
music-loop with no actual program. Late evenings, after 8pm local, the
transmitter is switched off completely in order to save energy costs.
Rainer stressed that the license is for 24/7 so they can use the
frequency at any time when they have content.

With a current rate of EUR 15,-- per hour airtime you cannot earn any
money. This broadcast station is an extenion of the amateur radio
hobby and the group seek to simply cover their costs.

Thinking back to the very start of amateur radio, Hams were allowed to
transmit music, news and entertainment programs, so it's nice to see
some of this coming back onto the short wave bands thanks to the
efforts of groups like this one.

I wonder as we see more and more broadcasters leaving the short wave
bands in favour of Internet broadcasting, whether we'll see more
licences and surplus transmitters being picked up by amateur radio
groups? This seems to be somewhat of a repeat of the situation when it
was said 200 metres and up is useless for broadcasting - give it to
the amateurs. We all know what then followed.

Perhaps amateur Radio groups around the world can put new life into
released shortware broadcast frequencies?

For program information about "Channel 292" simply go to their website
atwww.channel292.de

Why not give 6070KHz AM a listen?

Channel292 coverage map

The Channel292 station covers a lot of Western Europe but has also
been heard in Russia and the US