Monday 25 June 2012

Museum piece?

Last weekend I was lucky enough to take a trip up to London. Whilst there I visited the Science Museum.
Amongst the many exhibits there was a section on telecommunications. Since this is a museum I wasn't surprised to see exhibits such as the one below which shows a ships radio room from the early 1900's.


A little more of a surprise was the fact that there was a small section on Amateur and Citizens' band radio with exhibits that looked familiar, in fact the equipment on display is the same as that used by many radio amateurs today!



I am sure most of you will recognise the two amateur "rigs". The small transceiver on the bottom right is an "SMC Oscar One" mobile CB for the UK FM citizens band.
I guess these rigs are museum pieces being in excess of 30 years old now but I wonder how many museum goers will realise there are still plenty of similar radios in daily use!


Tuesday 12 June 2012

Sad News


If you are  in any way interested in Shortwave listening you may already have seen or heard the news that the English service of Radio Netherlands is closing down at the end of this month.
This in itself is not that surprising, many international broadcasters have left shortwave, generally replacing their broadcasts with an internet based service.
The shock news here is that Radio Netherlands is also closing its English webstream. so no more Radio Netherlands via my internet radio. This is a real shame RN's programmes were high quality and very informative in fact they were easily the most listened to station on my Internet Radio. So maybe we are not just witnessing the demise of shortwave broadcasting but also international broadcasting via the web. It is puzzling as in the past such broadcasters have always maintained an internet presence, In any event I will miss Radio Netherlands!