Thank you to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing this interesting three-part series.
Radio in Ireland Part 2 - Shortwave in Ireland
Jeff: Last week, we started a short series on the topic of broadcasting in Ireland, and we began by asking the question, “Did Ireland ever establish its own shortwave station?" Well, yes, it’s true; there have been both public and private shortwave services on the air in Ireland, and Ray Robinson has the story.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. Last week, we mentioned the fact that a high-powered medium wave station was erected in 1932 near Athlone in the center of the Emerald Isle. This station was on the air without a callsign, and it identified just as Radio Eireann.
In June 1938, the American radio magazine, Radio News, announced that a 2 kW shortwave station was under construction near Moydrum, a village about 1 mile east of Athlone. In March of the following year, the same magazine announced that the station was now on the air and testing on five different channels with a modest power output ranging from 2 to 5 kW.
The transmitter was constructed and installed by the Marconi Company of England and it was co-sited with the larger medium wave unit at Moydrum, just east of Athlone. Programming was a parallel relay of the medium wave unit.
In spite of the relatively low power, Radio Eireann’s shortwave transmissions were heard in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, as well as throughout the British Isles and in continental Europe. Several QSL letters were received in the United States and Australia.
In mid-1939, the scheduling from Radio Eireann was described as irregular, and apparently the station went silent just before the start of World War II in the September of that year. However, a year later the same shortwave transmitter was noted on the air again with the same style of programming in English as had been carried previously.
And with that reactivation in 1940, it was announced that the programming was directed towards the United States, although it was heard just as well in the South Pacific. The final monitoring report of Radio Eireann with just 2 kW on shortwave appeared in the Australian magazine Radio & Hobbies, in December 1941.
And so, the small transmitter went silent again, presumably due to wartime exigencies. However, it reappeared on the air three years later in 1944! The Irish government had announced plans to install a new 100 kW shortwave transmitter at the Athlone site, and so the small transmitter had been reactivated, supposedly as an interim service until the larger unit was ready.
It was on the air somewhat intermittently with a program relay from the medium wave service, usually a short broadcast consisting of a news bulletin and information about local events.
This radio programming from Ireland was heard in various countries in Europe, North America, and the South Pacific. On one occasion a soldier on duty on an island in the western Pacific happened to tune in to this exotic little shortwave station on the other side of the globe. That was in 1945.
Installation of the planned 100 kW unit did actually begin in 1948, and they got as far as on-air test transmissions during 1953. But, the Irish government then decided to divert funding originally intended for the shortwave service into other projects within Ireland itself.
And so, after nine years of on-air service during this second spate of activity, making twelve years altogether, the little transmitter was finally switched off for the last time, sometime during 1953.
At least one listener in New Zealand claimed that he heard a test transmission from the large 100 kW unit, and he did receive a QSL letter in acknowledgement. This historic QSL letter is now lodged in the Hocken Library in Dunedin, New Zealand, as part of the QSL collection of the New Zealand Radio DX League.
For a few months while the situation was uncertain, the 100 kW unit was simply warmed up each week, just to keep it serviceable. However, this unit was also switched off for the last time at the end of the same year, 1953.
Meanwhile, we should also mention shortwave activity in Northern Ireland. In 1937, the BBC had commissioned a new 100 kW shortwave transmitter as a replacement for an earlier smaller unit which had been on the air under the callsign 2BE. With the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, it was decided to co-site this new shortwave transmitter alongside a 100 kW medium wave unit at Lisnagarvey, near Belfast in Northern Ireland. This was a security measure, and part of a much larger project to diversify the BBC’s shortwave locations.
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| Daventry transmitter via BBC |
In September 1939, the BBC had only owned eight shortwave transmitters, and these were all located at Daventry, though they were also using a couple of units in the communication station located at Rugby. However, four years later, the BBC was broadcasting on 43 different shortwave transmitters in eight different locations around the UK, including the new one at Lisnagarvey in Northern Ireland.
The 100 kW shortwave transmitter there was manufactured by the Marconi Company in England, model number SWB18. This transmitter was taken into regular service on November 20, 1941 and the BBC identified it internally as Sender 51.
During the first year, this unit carried a relay of the Forces Program on 6140 kHz, after which it carried the general Overseas and Foreign Service. This transmitter left the air on May 26, 1946, when it was officially "mothballed." We presume that it was afterwards removed.
So, the only regular shortwave station on the air in Northern Ireland was this 100 kW unit operated by the BBC for a period of five and a half years. And there are no known QSL’s for this specific transmitter.
Some eight years later in 1961, Irish programming was heard on shortwave again for a series of special broadcasts beamed to Irish troops serving in the Congo in Africa. The frequency used for these broadcasts was 17544 kHz, but the source of the transmissions was unclear.
Then in 1980, broadcasts from an unlicensed station, Radio Dublin International, appeared on the shortwave dial. Initially this was using a very low powered unit at just 40 W, though later the power was increased to 800 W. Radio Dublin had found a loophole in the law, and was able to continue broadcasting on shortwave for many years. Here’s an audio clip of them a few weeks before Christmas on Friday November 29th, 1991, announcing 6910 kHz:
Irish programming has been heard on shortwave since then, but only when transmitted via stations in other countries. In 1996, for example, Mid West Radio presented a series of broadcasts in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. This event proved so popular that a regular service on shortwave was subsequently introduced using a 100 kW transmitter at the former Deutsche Welle site at Julich in Germany.
The official government radio service, RTE, introduced a similar shortwave service in 1997 via a 100 kW unit at WWCR in Nashville, Tennessee for coverage of the Americas, Africa and the Pacific, and then later also from Merlin Network One in the UK.
And finally, it was also in 1997 that UCB, United Christian Broadcasters, launched their own shortwave service, with a 1 kW transmitter on the air from a site just south of the border with Northern Ireland. QSL cards for the UCB broadcasts were issued from their headquarters in the English Midlands.
So, last week we looked at early wireless and medium wave stations in Ireland, and this week it’s been all about shortwave. Next week, in our third and final part of the series on radio broadcasting in Ireland, we’ll be looking at longwave, and presenting the story of Atlantic 252.
Radio in Ireland, Part 3 – Longwave (Atlantic 252 & RTE)
Jeff: Over the last two weeks, Ray Robinson has covered the radio broadcasting history of Ireland on both medium wave and shortwave. Today he looks at the longwave story, which began in the mid-1980’s. Here’s Ray.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. For those who were of Irish extraction living in Great Britain during the early 1980s, it was very difficult to stay in touch with home. Many felt cut off from family and friends in Dublin. Flights were expensive (three weeks' wages for a one-way flight to Dublin), phone calls intermittent, and taking the train and ferry home was an expedition. There was no internet, no Facebook or other apps for staying in touch, and no Irish news sources other than print.
Even those who lived in one of the Irish areas of London, and had the luxury of newsstands which sold newspapers from home, those would always be yesterday’s papers. But if they tuned down to the low end of the medium waveband they might be able to find RTE from Tullamore with 500 kW on 567 kHz. Not really clear enough to hear well during the daytime, but it came in better at night, especially in winter. Those in the north or west of England would hear RTE more clearly.
As we know, medium wave broadcasts can carry a lot further than FM if enough power is used, but long wave goes further still, so it’s odd that RTE didn’t use longwave in those days, despite Ireland having been allocated a longwave frequency at the Geneva conference in 1975. It was only when pirate Chris Cary made some test transmissions on long wave in the mid-1980’s that RTE sat up and took notice.
Cary was the owner of Radio Nova – arguably the most professional and most successful of all the unlicensed Irish radio stations in the 1980s. The station operated on 88.5 MHz FM and 819 kHz AM from Dublin, with a full 50 kW on the medium wave frequency. Many listeners in the Northwest of England were tuning in and there was some interest from advertisers too. Indeed, UK radio stations were really feeling the heat from Irish-associated interlopers in the mid-1980’s, because as well as Radio Nova coming in strongly from across the Irish sea, two powerful medium wave pirates – Caroline and Laser 558 - were beaming in from the North Sea and scooping up listeners in the heavily populated London & South East region.
Radio Caroline, founded and still operated at the time by the great Irish eccentric Ronan O’Rahilly, offered a mellow mix of rock, pop and album tracks and was moderately successful.
But high-energy Laser 558, with an all-American crew, targeted young audiences with a very focused “hot hits” format, was estimated to have acquired up to 9 million listeners within a few months of launching. And although the voices on air were American, the station was bankrolled by well-known Dublin businessman Philip Smyth.
In Ireland, they may have been big viewers of British television, but the British sure did like listening to Irish radio – whether they knew it or not.
Chris Cary wanted to expand Radio Nova’s reach into the UK still further, and figured that the longwave could help him. Tests were conducted in December 1985 and January 1986 on 254 kHz carrying a relay of Radio Nova’s medium wave signal. These longwave tests were first reported on Radio Netherlands’ Media Network program on Thursday, December 12th, 1985, and then Media Network again reported on January 23rd, 1986 that the signal strength had been increased, although it was still only around 15 kW. However, the station never launched full time on longwave, and in fact closed down completely just six weeks later.
Seven months after Cary’s tests, in August 1986, the Irish state broadcaster, RTE, announced that they were planning a joint venture with RTL, the owners of Radio Luxembourg, to launch a new pop music service on the same frequency. Their intention was not just to cover Ireland, but to beam the service into the UK on high power, collecting as many listeners and advertisers as they could.
Locals near the transmitter mast initially complained of interference to phone lines.
The project was originally christened Radio Tara (after the ancient capital of Ireland), but following international frequency changes, by the time of the launch, it had been renamed Atlantic 252, broadcasting on 252 kHz, 1190 metres longwave. Although the station had two 300 kW Continental transmitters which were theoretically capable of being combined to operate at a radiated power of 600 kW, international agreements limited it to a daytime maximum 500 kW, and just 100 kW during the hours of darkness.
Construction of an 813-foot three-sided tower at Clarkestown near Summerhill in County Meath had been controversial, but it went ahead in the face of complaints and protests by locals, and was complete by 1989.
About six miles from the transmitter site, the studios were in a large Victorian house in the town of Trim, a small market town of about 5,000 people situated at a ford on the River Boyne some 25 miles northwest of Dublin. The station duly launched at 8AM on Friday, September 1st, 1989, and the first voice on air was that of Gary King. The first record he played was ‘Sowing the Seeds of Love’ by Tears for Fears.
Initially, the station only operated from 6am to 7pm, and at the nighttime closedown, listeners were invited to retune to its sister station, Radio Luxembourg, which also cross-promoted Atlantic 252.
Like the successful offshore pirate Laser 558 (from whom it had nabbed a couple of on-air presenters), Atlantic had a very tightly formatted hit music playlist, and it quickly picked up a large audience. In August 1990, the station extended its broadcasting hours to 2AM, and then in September 1991, it went 24 hours.
Although the transmitter was in Ireland, the signal's reach meant that it was often looked upon as a "UK national station". Reception reports were received from such locations as Berlin, Finland, Ibiza and Moscow. The signal had even been received in Brazil at night-time. When Atlantic 252 launched, there were no other UK-wide commercial stations (the first would be Classic FM in 1992), and the lack of a UK broadcast licence attracted the attention of the IBA – the British agency then responsible for regulating all non-BBC broadcasting in the UK.
Even though the majority of UK commercial stations were on FM, with better audio quality, Atlantic 252 proved that if your product was good, you would attract listeners no matter what the medium, as shortwave stations are still proving today.
When the UK launched its RAJAR radio listening figures in late 1992, news outlets reported with surprise that the most listened-to commercial radio station in the UK was a longwave pop service originating from Ireland! It was recorded as having more than 5 million weekly listeners, almost a million ahead of its nearest rival, Classic FM. Amazingly, given the image of longwave as an outdated technology, more than 900,000 of these listeners were in the “under 15” category.
There had been a lot of skepticism of the Irish-based station amongst the media elite in London, and in January 1993, even while reporting the winning listener figures, the (UK) Independent newspaper snippily commented that this was a radio station “broadcast from a field 20 miles from Dublin”. This comment does rather seem to misunderstand how radio stations work – programmes originate from studios, and are sent to transmitters which, requiring large masts, are usually located in fields or on mountaintops.
The same article said that the station could “barely be heard” in the South East of the UK, but there are many who remember driving around Kent and indeed South London with Atlantic 252 blasting out on the car radio. At the peak of its popularity in 1993, Atlantic 252 had six million listeners aged 15+ in the UK and Ireland, but vastly increased competition from deregulated local radio stations with similar formats saw this decline yearly after that.
Atlantic lasted through the 90’s and into the early 2000’s before audiences finally declined, and the station closed at midnight on January 2nd, 2002. By then there were hundreds of new music stations on FM and MP3 players were rising in popularity.
A brief attempt was made to run a sports talk station - TeamTalk 252 – on the frequency, but with stiff competition from BBC Radio 5 Live and talkSPORT in the UK, TeamTalk only lasted about six months. In 2004, RTE finally decided to use the longwave frequency to rebroadcast RTE Radio 1. This had the advantage not only of being able to cover all of Ireland, but also of being able to reach the Irish expatriate community in Great Britain. RTE even conducted some DRM tests on the frequency in 2007, and in 2008, they closed all the MW transmitters of RTE Radio 1, continuing on LW, FM and DAB only.
In the 20-teens, the service seemed to be running on lower power than in the Atlantic 252 days, and the rise of multiple digital services meant that it was no longer the lifeline for the Irish in the UK that it once was.
Considering:
• the very large power consumption of the longwave transmitters,
• the explosion of RFI on AM frequencies from the myriad of electronic devices in our homes,
• the fact that longwave radios are now very rare in new cars, even in Europe,
• the comparatively small and ever-declining longwave listenership, and
• the easy availability of the service through online streaming,
the utility of 252 finally came to an end. The longwave transmitter was switched off for the last time in the early hours of Saturday morning, April 15th, 2023, and the transmitter mast was demolished three months later, on July 27th, 2023.
(Ray Robinson/Wavescan)
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