France Inter Longwave 162 kHz Final Sign-off: December 31, 2016

Live off-air recording of the last hour of programming from Radio France station France Inter Grandes Ondes (Longwave) on 31 December 2016 beginning just before 22:00 UTC on the longwave frequency of 162 kHz. The signal originated from the TDF (formerly known as Télédiffusion de France) 2000 kW transmitter (reportedly reduced to 1000 kW during the hours of darkness) at Allouis, near Bourges, France.

Following the time signal tones for 23:00 CET, the news bulletin, "Le Journal de 23h," is presented followed by the first hour of a special end-of-year episode of the music and chat program "Back to Back des voix de France Inter." At about the 51m:35s point in the recording is an announcement of the ending of France Inter's use of longwave. The "Back to Back" program resumes and the first hour ends with a countdown to midnight and the time signal tones for 00:00 CET and just as the presenter wishes Happy New Year, the audio feed to the transmitter is cut. However, the carrier remains on the air as it will continue to be used for the LTE-SYRTYE (Laboratoire national de métrologie et d'essais - Système de Références Temps-Espace) carrier-phase-modulated time code, widely used in France for clock synchronization. The recording continues for about one minute after the France Inter audio is cut. What can be heard weakly is the audio of two other powerful longwave stations on quite different frequencies, both in French: RTL (formerly Radio Luxembourg) on 234 kHz with a reported power of 1500 kW and Europe 1 on 183 kHz with a reported power of 2000 kW. These stations cross-modulate the 162 kHz TDF carrier in the ionosphere and the phenomenon is know as the Luxembourg effect as it was first noticed in the 1930s when the powerful Radio Luxembourg transmitter would interfere with the reception of other stations.

The broadcast was received by the Web-interface wideband software-defined radio at the University of Twente in Enschede, The Netherlands, with a "Mini-Whip" antenna in AM mode with 9.00 kHz RF filtering.