Last chance to hear: BBC 4 on longwave and CHU
----------------------------------------------

I started writing my intended follow-up to my "Lateral Thinking with
Withered Technology" post today, to share my thoughts arising from
responses to that post elsewhere in Gopherspace.  I've put about
an hour and a half into it and I'm not happy with it, I think it's
going to need that long again to get a point where I'd be happy
sharing it, and I don't have that in me today.  So, just to keep my
weekly posting streak alive, here's something substantially faster.
Sorry to keep you all waiting, believe me I'm more frustrated by
this than any of you are.  Posting regularly these past two months
or so has been great, but I'm also aware I've gotten into some kind
of toxic productivity mindset where I get quite stressed about
not being able to keep it up.  At the same time the weather is
getting really nice and I can feel my cycling and radio ambitions
for the year being stirred, so maybe it's a good idea to fall back
to fortnightly posting from June onward.

On the topics of radio and of June, there are two pretty big
shutdowns looming next month.  A big part of being a radio nerd
in 202x, sadly, is bearing witness to things being switched off,
including things which have been on the air for a century or close
to it, and which were within living memory critical infrastructure.

On June 27th (allegedly at 1 am, although I haven't seen an official
source for that time), the broadcast of BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz
from Droitwich will end[1].  This has been rumoured to be imminent
for several years now, has been announced and then delayed before,
but now seems to be finally happening.  This is the next and nearly
final step in the swift disappearance of the longwave broadcast
band from Europe.  It's been about five years since I first built
a LW-capable receiver, and back then Czechia, Denmark, Ireland and
Luxembourg were all still on the air, I think maybe Iceland too,
although I never managed to hear them.  They are all gone now,
and once the BBC goes silent, only Poland and Romania will be left.
A completely dead band by 2030 seems highly probable.  There's been
a long-standing rumour that British nuclear submarines monitor
198 kHz to assess whether or not the UK has been destroyed, the
longwave frequencies penetrating the water enough to be received
without surfacing.  Presumably they've got something else figured
out these days.

A little earlier on June 22nd, the Canadian government will shutdown
CHU, the Canadian shortwave time signal, which broadcasts on 3330,
7850, and 14670 kHz[2].  Whereas longwave broadcasters have been
dropping like flies for years now, I actually think CHU is maybe
the first (presumably not the last) shortwave time signal to be
shutdown.  First airing in 1923, it has been on the airwaves for
over 100 years!  It will be survived by, at least, WWV and WWVH in
the US (the later of which I've caught from both Australia and NZ
before), RWM in Russia (an easy catch in Europe) and BPM in China
(I've never heard this one, but I've also never tried too hard,
maybe I should).  CHU is unique amongst these in using the same
Bell 103 AFSK system employed by early dial-up modems to include
a machine-readable encoding of the time (and probably date) once
a minute.  I've never heard it before, but I'll make a fair effort
throughout June.  Supposedly they still issue QSL cards, although
I bet they'll be inundated in their final days and probably won't
keep up with requests.

If you live in the UK or Western Europe, or in Canada and presumably
parts of the US, these historic stations will be very easy to hear,
and June will be your last ever chance to do so!

Oh, a quick final note while I think of it: while visiting my family
in South Australia back in February this year, I was pleasantly
surprised by how many Australian airports still had their longwave
NDBs up and running.  I'm sure it's a small fraction of what it once
was, but I caught maybe half a dozen, including some from other
states, with some *very* casual listening on one or two nights.
Even Parafield airport, which is hardly a tiny regional place,
is still beeping out on 416 kHz and easily audible during the day
in the Northern suburbs of Adelaide at least!

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/work-warning/news/radio4lw
[2] https://nrc.canada.ca/en/certifications-evaluations-standards/canadas-official-time/nrc-shortwave-station-broadcasts-chu