XVRB Europe: August 21, 2011

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Marcel Strücker, for the following recording and notes:

The inaugural programme on XVRB Europe was heard on Sunday 21st of August 2011. The XVRB Europe programs were broadcast on a monthly basis, each one hour long. The project was meant to entertain shortwave radio enthusiasts. Dutch radio host Mike Wilson was the originator of the project which lasted until April 2013 when XVRB Europe ran out of money.

The show was well received. Swiss, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, British, Belgian, Greek and Dutch shortwave listeners e-mailed their reception reports. One British shortwave veteran even sent Wilson money 'to keep up the good work'.

The one hour shows were produced in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and sent to the German transmission site in Wertachtal. After closure of this site, the XVRB programmes came from Nauen, near the city of Berlin.

Both transmission sites produced a 150 kW signal, wich was picked up all over Europe.

1991 cassette of shortwave IDs, interval signals and numbers stations

SWLing Post reader and SRAA contributor, Frank, writes from Germany:

First let me say that I enjoy your blog a lot.

After a 2005-13 hiatus, I have rediscovered a childhood hobby and your reviews have helped me find my way to the post-Sony portable shortwave radio markets.

First, I obtained my “childhood dream” radio (Sony ICF 2001D), because at the time I made these recordings I was still in school and 1300 DM would have equaled over 1 year of pocket money, so a Supertech SR16HN had to do. I thought I got some fine results with this Sangean-Siemens re-branded receiver then, using a CB half-length antenna, a random wire, and much endurance.

I kept regular logs throughout the years, wrote to 50 international and pirate stations for QSL and compiled this cassette.

A few years before I got that trusty SR16HN, however, I recorded a few number stations (such as G3, Four Note Rising Scale etc) with an ordinary radio cassette recorder, and in 1991 I put them onto this tape as well. The other recordings are done with the same radio placed right in front of the SR 16HN.

Feel free to make use of these recordings. Most of it are the well-known international state-owned shortwave stations of the past; plus European pirates; plus number stations; and at the end, a few (off-topic) local Am and FM stations interval signals.

As I said, this collection I made shortly after the Wende/reunification period, when all former-GDR state broadcasters changed their names, sometimes more than once.

Please continue your good work on the blogs! Weather permitting I am often outside cycling and always have the tiny Sony ICF 100 with me (which I call my then-student’s dream radio of the later 90ies).

Cassette Side 1

Cassette Side 2