Monday, December 29, 2008

Latvia relays to end

Last broadcast with 100kw from 9290 khz (Ulbroka, Latvia)

Dear Listeners,
On the 30th of December 2008 at 1300 utc the last broadcast with 100kw from the 9290 khz
relay service will take place (RMRC 13.00 -15.00 UTC).

Reported from the relay Licence holder, a new relay service will start sometime in February 2009 with test tones and alignments.

The Transmitter max power will be 10kw. No more information is available at this time

All the best
Tom

(via Tom Taylor)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The statement doesn't say where the new 10kw tx is located. Maybe it will be the World Music Radio tx in Denmark?

Does this mean the end of another country on shortwave or will the Latvian authorities lease out Ulbroka again?

It wasn't widely used, although with more publicity it could have signed up some of the religious broadcasters to broadcast during the week while the "free radio" operators continued at weekends.

It would have been a more viable operation then.

As it was two-three hours use a week can barely have paid the bills for switching the transmitter on.

Anonymous said...

<< As it was two-three hours use a week can barely have paid the bills for switching the transmitter on. >>

That's the problem. I don't have any first-hand information but a possible new service with 10 kW would likely come from Latvia again. The mediumwave service of Radio Nord which ran from Ulbroka with 2,7 kW on 945 kHz until mid-2008 has restarted from a different site and under a new name (Radio Merkurs, 1485 kHz, Agenskalns, Western Riga).

The 9290 service was widely used 2003-2005 before prices got up from 46 to 65 EUR per hour. Yet it is a pity to lose this nice service which a lot of stations have used.

A tribute website is to be set up at http://9290.webs.com

Stay tuned!