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View Full Version : Milestones: Voice of Russia Goes Dark After All



W9JEF
04-05-2014, 12:18 PM
Hope it's not presumptuous to post this in Ham Radio Chit-Chat...
from back in the 50's I recall Radio Moscow smack in the middle
of the 40 meter ham band (7200) coming in like a "ton of borscht."





The Voice of Russia -- the former "Radio Moscow" -- ended its shortwave broadcasts on Tuesday, April 1 -- No fooling! After contradictory announcements and reports last December, it appears the international broadcaster has indeed pulled the plug on its HF transmissions. SWL Tom Witherspoon, K4SWL, contacted VOR. As he reported (http://swling.com/blog/2014/03/voice-of-russia-to-abandon-shortwave-on-april-1-2014/) on his blog (http://swling.com/blog/), Voice of Russia's Elena Osipova told him, "This is to thank you for your message and confirm the information about the upcoming cancellation of the Voice of Russia's short- and medium wave transmissions as of April 1, 2014."


https://bay179.mail.live.com/Handlers/ImageProxy.mvc?bicild=&canary=y8eRe2s82ue7OUf%2b5J%2f6kdgmKjR0Uzq1t5m%2ff n8cPSQ%3d0&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww3.arrl.org%2fnl%2fal%2fimage%2 fVoice%2520of%2520Russia%2520logo2.jpg




Richard Weil, KW0U, in St Paul, Minnesota, was able to hear the final shortwave broadcast. "Just barely picked up the last-day broadcast of VOR on 13.805 at 1300 UTC," he commented on Witherspoon's site. He used a dipole in his attic. "No mention on air of a final broadcast, which some services have given before closing down," he added. "Too bad to lose it, but time does move on."

Effective December 9, as a result of a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Voice of Russia radio company officially ceased to exist and merged with several other state-run news agencies as part of Rossia Segodnya, a Russia-based international news service. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the station, then as Radio Moscow, was an easy catch for budding short-wave listeners (SWLs), many of whom later gravitated to Amateur Radio.

"I remember when theVoice of Russia and Radio Moscow absolutely dominated the shortwaves, especially in my early years as a radio listener," Witherspoon remarked on his blog. "Times have changed for this broadcaster, who has been the mouthpiece for Russia and the Soviet Union."In 2003 VOR was among the first major international radio broadcasters to launch daily broadcasts to Europe in Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM (http://www.drm.org/)).

kb2vxa
04-06-2014, 12:14 AM
The US government isn't the only one that wastes money, after they finally replaced the filter caps in the Ukrainian transmitters they shut them down. Maybe they'll recoup a bit of their loss by selling them for scrap?

N2CHX
04-06-2014, 07:16 AM
Welp, more room in the 40 meter band after sunset.

n0iu
04-06-2014, 08:54 AM
I was listening to the Voice of Russia on April 1st and the last thing they said before shutting down was from this guy:

http://stuartaustin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/putin.jpg
"What's mine in mine and what's yours is negotiable!"

W3WN
04-06-2014, 09:16 AM
Welp, more room in the 40 meter band after sunset.There are still those of us who remember when 40 meters was virtually unusable from 7100 kc up due to all the SWBC stations. Seemed like every 5 kc was Radio Moscow, BBC, VOA, Radio Prague, Radio Canada, Radio Moscow, BBC, VOA, Radio Moscow, BBC... there was a lot of transmissions from Radio Moscow, the BBC, and VOA, with a sprinkling of the lesser players.

...and yes, I said kc, not kHz...

I'll miss the propaganda. Yeah, I know, you can get it all off of live streams on the web these days, but somehow, it's just not the same.

I won't, however, miss struggling to have a CW QSO with a shaky Novice fist, only to get clobbered at 10 minutes before the top of the hour by the tones or chimes or start-up tones from another SWBC opening up for the evening.

kb2vxa
04-07-2014, 11:06 AM
The propaganda I miss was the Radio Moscow vs. VOA during the Cold War, a regular three ring circus. Speaking of which, the propaganda wars right here in the never ending global warming and fracking threads is just as entertaining, until one gets bored silly with the samol samol. Then the propaganda on any nightly world news TV broadcast is just as boring.

Speaking of chimes interval signals, how about the half hour of wind chimes before the morning W2VJZ patriotic ultraconservative right wing talk show on 3885 AM? Unlike Russian Limburger's oxycodone overdose fueled rants Irb made complete sense. He missed his calling being born too late to enlist in Washington's army, a Revolutionary to the core. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't too keen on his interval signal but I'm among those who liked and admired him, a wonderful person and the salt of the Earth to those who got to know him and more so for those like me who met him.

What's mine is mine and what WAS yours is mine too!