“Radio is Dead”\u00a0\u00a0 July 1, 2012 –\u00a0 God<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.catholicculture.org\/news\/headlines\/index.cfm?storyid=14611<\/a><\/p>\n The Catholic Church in Rome is shutting down its radio operation to focus its future efforts on the Internet and satellite delivery of the Message.\u00a0\u00a0 Notice that the story mentions the Vatican is going to also move away from using “Medium Wave” radio.<\/p>\n Unless you’re a total geek\u00a0 and at least 50 years old – or lived in Europe, you probably don’t even know what Short Wave radio is.<\/p>\n The BBC North American Service you hear on some Public Radio Stations is the residue of what used to be short wave.\u00a0\u00a0 Virtually every country used Short Wave radio to distribute its political propaganda, and the British Empire (that the Sun Never Set On) was at the top of the list – having radio stations that targeted every part of the world and in many different languages.\u00a0\u00a0 The BBC World Service was funded by the equivalent of the US State Department – it wasn’t the service for domestic listeners that is funded by the Radio and TV tax.\u00a0\u00a0 About two years ago, the British government decided it was no longer going to fund the BBC World Service, and at least at one point the US State Department offered to help fund the BBC, and of course your local Public Radio Station is.<\/p>\n Short Wave is AM radio – but at higher frequencies than your old AM radio –\u00a0 signals that more freely bounce off he ionosphere – the layer of the atmosphere that reflects radio signals back to the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 Your AM radio (in the United States) goes from 530 kHz to 1620 kHz (or 1700 if the radio was made in the last 10 years for sale in the United States)…\u00a0 or 0.530 to 1.620 MHz if you prefer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The rest of the world calls this “Medium Wave” AM.\u00a0\u00a0 The higher the frequency, the shorter the wave gets, hence “Short Wave” AM goes from 1.8 MHz to 30 Mhz\u00a0 (30 MHz is essentially the dividing line where FM starts).<\/p>\n There is lots of odd “stuff” in Shortwave AM – it isn’t all just the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Radio Moscow.\u00a0\u00a0 My father was an Amateur Operator – most of his life, he hung out with the “old timers” on the 160 meter band (1800-2000 kHz) at the very bottom of shortwave, an area that was also used by the LORAN-A navigation system<\/a>, widely used before GPS to tell ocean going ships where they are..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There has been International Cooperation since the beginning of radio that has for the most part been followed, with countries agreeing on what frequencies should be used for what purposes, include “Ham” radio. \u00a0 As a geeky child, I spent a lot of time listening to Short Wave, a lot of it being those odd “Calls to Prayer” from countries in the Middle East a long long way away.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.iaru.org\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Radio is Dead”\u00a0\u00a0 July 1, 2012 –\u00a0 God http:\/\/www.catholicculture.org\/news\/headlines\/index.cfm?storyid=14611 The Catholic Church in Rome is shutting down its radio operation to focus its future efforts on the Internet and satellite delivery of the Message.\u00a0\u00a0 Notice that the story mentions the … Continue reading