Other Gold mediumwave stations closed already in June this year. Gold 1548, servicing London from the Saffon Green transmitter, will follow end-September (source: Ydun’s Medium Wave Info).
Before the merger of many independent local radio stations in the United Kingdom this was the transmitter of Capital Radio. With 97.5 kW this station was significantly more powerful than other ILR stations and easy to receive here in The Netherlands. The higher power probably has to do with the size of the London area and the urban environment.
In the 1980s I had a lot of fun chasing the different ILR (and BBC) local radio stations. The stations all had their own local identity and studios and hadn’t merged into larger conglomerates yet. Below you can see the Capital QSL I received in 1980. Had it been a post stamp it would have been a collector’s item given the apparent misprint of the frequency. Truth be told, I regularly get confused with the 1458, 1485, 1548 and 1584 frequencies myself.
Slowly but surely the era of MW and LW is coming to an end unfortunately.
Still I like to listen to AM broadcast, I just love the sound of it….nostalgia too đŸ™‚
At the moment 648 kHz Radio Caroline if one of my favourites…..hope it stays there for a while.
Greetings from Belgium.
Patrick
That’s true and I agree… I enjoy that AM sound as well. At my age it doesn’t hurt to be a bit nostalgic., although I have to admit, I was a bit shocked this morning when I realized that my CAPITAL QSL was already 43 years old!
Only in Spain, to a limited extent in Portugal and of course in a few Eastern European countries you still see a strong MW presence from the larger stations/networks. It is what it is, and short term it does create opportunities for us DX-ers trying to catch low power and transatlantic stations. That said, I’m going to make an extra effort to get the Spanish station QSL-ed this winter.
Regards,
Peter
Hi,
so also the transmitter in Manchester will shut down and Gold will sign off from medium wave?
Sad… but we can’t change things changeing.
73 de Kim
DG9VH/DE9VHV
Yes Kim, I am afraid the Manchester transmitter will also shut down, but I haven’t seen an annoucement on this one yet. Thanks for your interest in this site!