Happy New Year
Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Christmas Program on Shortwave
As every year, Northern German Radio (NDR) has scheduled a four-hours Christmas program on shortwave – “Gruß an Bord” (greeting all ships) – for December 24, from 19:00 to 23:00 UTC. The program usually begins with a news broadcast of about five minutes at 19 UTC, and the actual Christmas program would start right after that.
[Please mind the updates underneath – Dec 18, 2019]

Leer Reformed Church weather vane, archive / edited
All messages will be pre-recorded, in Leer, a town in northwestern Germany, on December 8, in Hamburg on December 15, and at NDR broadcasting house (where letters and emails will be accepted until December 15), and be read out on December 24, from 22:15 UTC, according to the NDR schedule. Sometime during the first three hours of the program, a one-hour religious service is usually transmitted.
Radio Berlin-Brandenburg’s (RBB) media magazine has published the broadcasting schedule as follows1):
19:00 – 21:00 hours UTC
transmitter site |
kW | direct | kHz |
Nauen, Germany |
125 | west | 6080 |
Nauen, Germany |
125 | south- east |
9720 |
Moosbrunn, Austria |
100 | east | 9570 |
Issoudun, France |
250 | south- east |
9800 |
Update, Dec 18 | 125 | 9740 | |
Issoudun, France |
250 | south | 11650 |
Noratus, Armenia |
100 | Europe | 6030 |
21:00 – 23:00 hours UTC
transmitter site |
kW | direct | kHz |
Nauen, Germany |
125 | west | 6145 |
Nauen, Germany |
125 | south- east |
9720 |
Moosbrunn, Austria |
100 | east | 9675 |
Issoudun, France |
250 | south- east |
9590 |
Update, Dec 18 | 125 | 9740 | |
Issoudun, France |
250 | 9830 | |
Noratus, Armenia |
100 | Europe | 6155 |
The Nauen site is said to be the oldest continuously operating radio transmitting installation in the world. There was an interruption of about a decade, however, from May 1945 to 1955. By the end of the 1950s, it was also one of Radio Berlin International‘s (RBI) two transmission sites, thus carrying East Germany’s official programs for an international audience.
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Notes
1) as at November 1 (which seems to suggest that changes aren’t ruled out)
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Updates (Dec 18, 2019)
See Deutsche Welle reference to the NDR program for latest frequencies
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Related
Program history, Dec 25, 2017
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, run, run, Rudolph, and let it snow.
Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Christmas Program on Shortwave
Following an established annual routine, Northern German Radio (NDR) broadcasts a four-hours Christmas program on shortwave – “Gruß an Bord” (greeting all ships) – on December 24, from 19:00 to 23:00 UTC.
_______________________________________ | |||
Time |
Freq. | Transmit- | Target |
(UTC) | (kHz) | ter site | area |
___________________________________ | |||
19:00 – | 6,080 | Nauen, | Atlantic N |
21:00 | Germany | ||
___________________________________ | |||
19:00 – | 11,650 | Issoudun, | Atlantic S |
21:00 | |||
___________________________________ | |||
19:00 – | 9,800 | Issoudun, | Atlantic, |
21:00 | France | Indian O., | |
Sth Africa | |||
___________________________________ | |||
19:00 – | 9,740 | Nauen, | Indian |
21:00 | Germany | Ocean W | |
___________________________________ | |||
19:00 – | 9,570 | Moos- | Indian |
21:00 | brunn, | Ocean E | |
Austria | |||
___________________________________ | |||
19:00 – | 6,030 | Armenia | Europe |
21:00 | |||
___________________________________ | |||
21:00 – | 6,145 | Nauen | Atlantic N |
21:00 | |||
___________________________________ | |||
21:00 – | 9,830 | Issoudun | Atlantic S |
21:00 | |||
___________________________________ | |||
21:00 – | 9,590 | Issoudun | Atlantic, |
23:00 | Indian O., | ||
Sth Africa | |||
___________________________________ | |||
21:00 – | 9,720 | Nauen | Indian |
23:00 | Ocean W | ||
___________________________________ | |||
21:00 – | 9,650 | Moos- | Indian |
23:00 | brunn | Ocean E | |
___________________________________ | |||
21:00 – | 6,155 | Armenia | Europe |
23:00 | |||
___________________________________ |
Sources
Gruss an Bord, NDR, Nov 28, 2018
Background, RBB, Nov 17, 2018
History, Dec 25, 2017
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Happy New Year!
Taipei 101 light and fireworks show, published by the Liberty Times online.
Norddeutscher Rundfunk Christmas Program on Shortwave
Just as in previous years, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) broadcasts a program for ship’s crews at sea and their relatives and friends at home on shortwave, from 19:00 to 23:00 UTC (20:00 to 24:00 central European time).
A rotatable directional antenna at Moosbrunn transmitter site, Austria. Wikimedia Commons, click picture for source description)
6125 kHz, target area northern Atlantic, transmitter in Nauen
9685 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (west), transmitter in Nauen
9925 kHz, target area Atlantic/South Africa/Indian Ocean, transmitter Issoudun
11650 kHz, target area Atlantic (south), transmitter Issoudun
11800 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (east), transmitter Moosbrunn
6040 kHz, target area northern Atlantic, transmitter in Nauen
9515 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (west), transmitter in Nauen
9765 kHz, target area Indian Ocean (east), transmitter Moosbrunn
9880 kHz, target area Atlantic (south), transmitter Moosbrunn
9925 kHz, target area Atlantic/South Africa/Indian Ocean, transmitter Issoudun
For listeners in Germany or not too far from there, medium wave may also be an option:
702 kHz (Flensburg), 792 kHz (Lingen), 828 kHz (Hanover), and 972 kHz (Hamburg).
Probably the last chance to listen to the program on medium wave, as according to plans, January 13, 2015, will mark the end of medium wave broadcasts by NDR.
Shortwave Log, Northern Germany, February 2014: Bremen loses its Voice
–
1. Radio Bremen – some history
Radio Bremen‘s medium wave transmitter near Oberneuland, northeast of Bremen, has been torn down. The about six hectares of the former transmission site will be recultivated, but won’t be turned into building ground, Bremen’s daily Weser Kurier wrote on January 30. The site is surrounded by a natural preserve area. A citizens association reportedly expressed “great joy” about the removal of the 45-meters tall radio tower and the surrounding equipment as it had been a disfigurement of the landscape (“eine Verschandelung der Landschaft”).

Medium wave transmitter, Oberneuland, summer 2010
The Oberneuland site was built in 1998/1999. It replaced a previous transmitter site in Horn-Lehe, also located northeast of Bremen, but somewhat closer to the city than Oberneuland.
The Oberneuland transmitter was switched off in March 2010, which led to some listener protests just less than 200, according to Radio Bremen four years ago.

“The Caller”, Radio Bremen / studio Bremen, HInter der Mauer. Sculpture by Gerhard Marcks. Inscription: “The Caller empathises with the Stentor character who, with a magnanimous and brazen voice, shouted as loud as fifty men.” Created in 1967, commissioned by Radio Bremen.
At the time, Radio Bremen could be heard on VHF/FM, on medium wave, and on shortwave.
The Oberneuland site had been unable to provide supraregional reception of the medium-wave programs in a satisfactory quality, Radio Bremen wrote in a soothing press release of February 9, 2014. Also, the rather small number of less than 200 responses to the transmitter’s switch-off on March 10, 2010 had suggested that most people who tuned in to medium wave were actually rather radio hobbyists than real listeners. The Weser Kurier on January 30 quoted a Radio Bremen speaker as saying that hopes for medium wave as a carrier for digital radio had remined unfulfilled.
Certainly, Oberneuland’s medium wave was no match for its predecessor in Horn-Lehe. Almost fifteen years prior to this small one-tower site in Oberneuland, on January 31, 1999, the VHF/FM radio tower (211 meters high) and the medium-wave radio tower (110 meters high, probably plus a smaller reserve tower) in Horn-Lehe had been demolished. Hundreds of people had their savage amusement that day, looking on from a pedestrian bridge across the highway Autobahn A27.
Until seventeen years ago, Radio Bremen even ran a shortwave transmitter, also on the site in Horn-Lehe, in cooperation with Sender Freies Berlin (SFB, “Free Berlin”). The shortwave broadcasts from Horn-Lehe came from a horizontal rhombic antenna, carried by four radio towers of 25 meters height each. The shortwave broadcasts started in 1961, on 6195 kHz, and ended on October 1, 1996, on 6190 kHz. The shortwave transmitter was then sold to south-western Germany, to Madascar from there, and may now still be in operation from east of Africa, German shortwave listeners magazine Radio-Kurier wrote in 2012.
–
2. Radio Riyadh
BSKSA Saudi Arabia, also known as Radio Riyadh or, in French, as Radio Saoudienne Internationale, has dropped English as a broadcasting language on shortwave, along with a number of French transmissions, reports the British DX Club, in its February 2014 Shortwave Guide for the Middle East. One of the station’s French broadcasts on shortwave continues, however, daily from 14:00 to 15:55 hours UTC on 17660 kHz.

Saudi Arabia shortwave radio, February 4 2014, in French. Click symbol for soundfile.
May be removed ten days after posting.
The target area for the only remaining shortwave broadcast in French are Senegal, Mali, and Cameroun, according to the station’s announcement. While this broadcast still included news during the summer months of last year, at 15:30 UTC, this program item, too, seems to have been dropped now. The focus is on religion, and sometimes on culture, in programs like “the Saudi woman” (La Femme Saoudienne).
According to the British DX Club’s Shortwave Guide for the Middle East, shortwave broadcasts in Arabic to North Africa, to Europe and the Mediterranean, the Middle East, to a number of Asian regions are continued. The transmissions also include Swahili, Indonesian, Urdu, Bengali, Persian, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Turkish. For details and frequencies, please go there.
–
============
–
3. Recent Logs
If you want to try reception, try now. Some or many of the frequencies may change on March 29/30, with the usual, twice-a-year, adaptation to winter/summer propagation conditions.
International Telecommunication Union letter codes used in the table underneath:
AFS – South Africa; ARG – Argentina; ARS – Saudi Arabia; BOT – Botswana; CAN – Canada; CHN – China; CUB – Cuba; D – Germany; DJI – Djibouti; EGY – Egypt; G – Great Britain; IND – India; IRL – Ireland; KRE – North Korea; PHL – Philippines; RRW – Rwanda; SWZ – Swaziland; TIB – Tibet, TUR – Turkey; USA – USA.
Languages (“L.”):
? – unknown; A – Arabic; C – Chinese; E – English; F – French; G – German; J – Japanese; R – Russian; S – Spanish; T – Tagalog.
kHz |
Station |
Ctry |
L. |
Day |
GMT |
S | I | O |
4905 | PBS Tibet |
TIB | E | Feb 2 |
16:06 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
9615 | CRI Beijing |
CHN | G | Feb 2 |
18:00 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
9525 | Radio Pilipinas |
PHL | T/ E |
Feb 3 |
17:30 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
11890 | Radio Pilipinas |
PHL | T/ E |
Feb 3 |
17:30 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
15190 | Radio Pilipinas |
PHL | T/ E |
Feb 3 |
17:30 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
7850 | CHU Ottawa |
CAN | E/ F |
Feb 4 |
04:42 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
17660 | BSKSA Riyadh |
ARS | F | Feb 4 |
14:01 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
4905 | PBS Tibet |
TIB | E | Feb 4 |
16:16 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
11710 | RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | E | Feb 6 |
02:00 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
3995 | HCJB Weener- moor |
D | R | Feb 6 |
04:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
7550 | AIR Delhi |
IND | E | Feb 8 |
17:55 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
3995 | HCJB Weener- moor |
D | G | Feb 8 |
19:14 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
4905 | PBS Tibet |
TIB | E | Feb 9 |
16:00 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
4920 | PBS Tibet |
TIB | E | Feb 9 |
16:00 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
4905 | PBS Tibet |
TIB | E | Feb 10 |
16:00 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
15235 | Channel Africa |
AFS | E | Feb 10 |
17:02 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
7550 | AIR1) Delhi |
IND | E | Feb 10 |
18:15 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
11710 | RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | E | Feb 13 |
02:01 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
11710 | RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | E | Feb 13 |
02:15 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
9410 | R. Cairo | EGY | G | Feb 15 |
19:00 | 4 | 5 | 12) |
5060 | PBS Xinjiang |
CHN | C | Feb 16 |
02:49 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
4930 | VoA Botswana |
BOT | E | Feb 16 |
03:00 | 4 | 5 | 3 |
4780 | Radio Djibouti |
DJI | A | Feb 16 |
03:30 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
7425 | Deutsche Welle Kigali |
RRW | E | Feb 16 |
04:00 | 3 | 5 | 3 |
5040 | Radio Habana Cuba |
CUB | E | Feb 16 |
06:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
4905 | PBS Tibet |
TIB | E | Feb 16 |
16:00 | 3 | 2 | 23) |
3985 | R. Prague | D | G | Feb 16 |
16:30 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
3985 | R. Poland | D | G | Feb 16 |
17:00 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
9720 | R. Cairo | EGY | ? | Feb 17 |
01:57 | 4 | 5 | 1 |
9720 | R. Cairo | EGY | ? | Feb 17 |
02:00 | 4 | 5 | 1 |
6155 | Channel Africa |
AFS | E | Feb 17 |
03:00 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
11710 | RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | E | Feb 21 |
02:40 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
15235 | Channel Africa |
AFS | E | Feb 21 |
17:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
7550 | AIR Delhi |
IND | E | Feb 21 |
17:40 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
7550 | AIR1) Delhi |
IND | E | Feb 21 |
18:30 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
11710 | RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | J | Feb 22 |
01:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
11710 | RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | E | Feb 22 |
02:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
3215 | WWCR | USA | E | Feb 22 |
03:30 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
3240 | TWR Swazi- land |
SWZ | ? | Feb 22 |
03:34 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
3413 (USB) |
Shannon Volmet |
IRL | E | Feb 22 |
03:42 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
2872 (USB) |
Shan- wick |
G/ IRL |
E | Feb 22 |
03:53 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
3995 | HCJB Weener- moor |
D | R | Feb 22 |
04:10 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
4765 | Radio Progreso |
CUB | S | Feb 22 |
04:16 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
4905 | PBS Tibet |
TIB | E | Feb 22 |
16:03 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
4500 | PBS Xinjiang |
CHN | ? | Feb 23 |
17:30 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
17660 | BSKSA Riyadh |
ARS | F | Feb 24 |
14:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
15235 | Channel Africa |
AFS | E | Feb 24 |
17:00 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
17540 | Radio Impala |
?4) | E | Feb 24 |
17:30 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
3950 | PBS Xinjiang |
CHN | C | Feb 24 |
23:10 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
3950 | PBS Xinjiang |
CHN | C | Feb 25 |
00:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
15205 | BSKSA Riyadh |
ARS | A | Feb 25 |
16:42 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
6170 | Stimme Koreas |
KRE | G | Feb 25 |
19:00 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
15190 | Radio Pilipinas |
PHL | T/ E |
Feb 26 |
19:04 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
15345 | RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | G | Feb 26 |
21:00 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
11710 5) |
RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | E | Feb 27 |
02:00 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
11710 5) |
RAE Buenos Aires |
ARG | E | Feb 27 |
02:40 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
4775 | TWR Swazi- land |
SWZ | ? | Feb 28 |
03:42 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
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Footnotes
1) received with a Silver XF 900 and its built-in telescopic antenna (SIO 555). All India Radio had occasional blackouts early in February (usually for around or less than a minute), but the signal rarely leaves anything to be desired otherwise. All other broadcasts received with a Sony ICF 2001D shortwave receiver and a simple wire antenna (12 meters length) or a dipole (east-west) respectively.
2) great signal, but modulation remains the usual disaster, hence O=1.
3) strong interference from upper-side band.
1) either from Uganda (which seems to appear unlikely when you looking at their program which is critical of the Ugandan government, but but Uganda is their location according to their website), or from Madagascar.
5) Possibly around 11710.7 kHz. However, it may also have been tries to escape interfering signals that made RAE appear to be more than 0.5 kHz above nominal frequency.
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Related
» Logs January 2014
» Logs December 2013
» Führungskrise, Frankfurter Rundschau, Dec 5, 2008
» Teilprivatisierung und Tarife, verdi, June 30, 2006
Main Tag: » shortwave radio
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