WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News

Albeit partly for good reasons, those stations operated from friendly
countries, but it would have been a lot better, if they had never used
other countries' facilities. At least as far as Portugal is (or "was")
concerned, that friendship did translate into cynical and damaging action
on certain occasions, mainly during the 1960s, with the latest "friendly
action" happening in late 1975. Why? Where? I believe many will know the
reasons.
Even regarding the operator of DWelle in Portugal, i.e. Pro-Funk GmbH, the
situation seems not to be as it should, so I've been hearing for long.
They were granted a site and, apparently, in exchange, the only
compensation that was required was a stipulated amount of weekly hours of
relays for the former Emissora Nacional, now RDP. A few years ago, the
agreement was renewed and a similar compensation was agreed upon. I've
always heard the amount of hours at the RDP disposal should be greater,
but PFunk always seems to find a reason not to comply on grounds of
needing them for DWelle broadcasts. Either the contract is being fully
respected or the local responsibles are turning a blind eye on the
situation, even if the relay is not that needed for quite, really quite
some time.
(Carlos Goncalves-POR, dxld Jan 11)
Re Gloria and Sines:
In the case of Holzkirchen, IBB also just took the txs away and left it to
the German authorities to get rid of the tx plant; if I recall correctly,
a considerable amount of money had been allocated for this purpose from
the federal budget. However, the situation may be different insofar as the
German authorities pushed IBB off Holzkirchen, something that Portugal
apparently did not.
The Gloria site was in 1992 or 1993 also involved in a case of "It's
rather bad form to put a SW broadcast to a country on a freq occupied in
that country, and this gets you a het to boot" by carrying VOA German on
6030. Hearsay had it that the internal comments at Sueddeutscher Rundfunk
were quite harsh.
Some notes on Sines: In the past they appeared on the market as "Radio
Trans Europe", leasing airtime to various broadcasters, with RCI being the
last one who moved out of Sines I think; earlier customers included AWR
and IBRA Radio. This way they used the tx capacity allegedly not available
for RDP. During the nineties the "Radio Trans Europe" brand disappeared,
probably related to major investments (namely the replacement of the old
Marconi txs by new Thomcast/Thales gear). I think since then only Pro-Funk
GmbH (once funded as "Pro-Funk Gesellschaft zur Rundfunkfoerderung im In-
und Ausland mbH") is mentioned as operator of the Sines station. Of course
Deutsche Welle is the sole owner of Pro-Funk, and it might be of interest
that there is (or was) also a Pro-Funk Antigua Ltd., in addition to DW's
55 percent share of The Caribbean Relay Company Ltd., the operator of the
Antigua station.
(Kai Ludwig-D, wwdxc BC-DX Jan 14)
ROMANIA 1197 kHz Antena Brasovului (ROU) um 1600 UTC in Rumaenisch mit
ID, Popmusik und lokalen Berichten. 34333.
(Patrick Robic-AUT, A-DX Jan 16)
Updated B-05 schedule of Radio Romania International (#Saftitza 50 kW)
ARABIC 0730-0756 11710 11905 15280 15330
1500-1556 9655 15235
AROMANIAN 1600-1626 6175#
1800-1826 7130#
2000-2026 6045#
CHINESE 0500-0526 15160 17870
1400-1426 9720 11755