The story of Sines Transmitter Park

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To mark the end of the activities of the Sines transmitter park, in Portugal, Deutsche Welle presents next October, 29, a special edition of its Portuguese program “Contraste”, telling the story of the German transmitting station in the Iberic Peninsula. It has been informed by the chief of the Portuguese redaction, Johannes Beck, during the night broadcast of DW in Portuguese for Africa, last Saturday. As you can hear in the recording below, Beck was telling about the changes for listeners in Africa with the closure of the transmitters in Sines and Trincomalee (Sri Lanka). The Sines picture above is in a discussion forum in the internet (link).

The recording of this night program of DW in Portuguese goes to my archive of shortwave, since was broadcasted from Trincomalee, with pretty good reception in Brazil, at 19h30 UTC, in 15.640 khz. I think that a special program about the Asian station would be a good idea too. A curiosity: before beginning the Portuguese program, Trincomalee keeps using the classical “Pausezeichen” of DW.

The new scheme of transmission in Portuguese for Africa, from October 30 on, just from Kigali, Ruanda, is in DW’s site and reproduced below:

- Morning Edition - 05h30-06h UTC: 9.800 kHz (250 kW) and 12.045 kHz

- Night Edition - 19h30-20h UTC - 6.145 kHz (250 kW) and 9.735 kHz (250 kW)

And, as we’re talking about closure of transmission parks, there is an interesting  article from Victor Goonetilleke in the blog DX Asia, defending it would be technically better broadcast for Africa from Trincomalee than from Kigali. Goonetilleke writes also about the growing up of China Radio International in the vacuum from the spaces abandoned by the big occidental stations.

Part of the program of DW in Portuguese for Africa, on the October, 15: