A new shortwave transmitting station is now under construction for the International Service of Radio Nacional de Venezuela, Antena Internacional*. The new installation will include a 50 kW transmitter to be operated on the 60 metre Tropical Band, and five 100 KW shortwave transmitters to be operated with several antenna arrays.
The new transmitting station is located in the State of Guárico, and the antenna systems will include several high gain curtain arrays and also quadrant type omnidirectional antennas for short and medium range coverage. The new transmitters are of the pulse step modulation type, and very efficient from the point of view of energy conversion, that
is that they are capable of producing a 100 percent modulated signal with much less electricity than what is required for a high level plated modulated transmitter.
The Radio Nacional de Venezuela engineering department is in charge of the project and it is expected that the first transmitter may be on the air pretty soon. The new Venezuelan international broadcasting facility is going to be one of the most modern and energy efficient installations in the Americas, and its antenna systems were designed with coverage of the Americas as the prime target area, but as expected, it may be heard around the world when propagation conditions are good.
(Source: Arnie Coro, RHC DXers Unlimited via DX Listening Digest)
* Antena Internacional (also known as Canal Internacional) currently leases shortwave airtime from Radio Habana, Cuba.
on Feb 15th, 2008 at 19:51
You must be mad to built your own SW station with so much capacity available. One of them only a few miles away from Venezuela (Bonaire RN station, however I can imagine the RN management is not keen on doing business with Chavez).
Apparently Chavez from his part does not trust other administrations, and he is loaded with oil dollars to put ip his own station.
on Mar 8th, 2008 at 16:01
RNV broadcast on SW in English and other languages in the 1970’s in conjunction with and shortly after an International Maritime Law conference held in Venezuela, and were well heard around the world, but particularly in the Americas. The question is, of course, will they broadcast in languages other than Spanish? Any idea other than ’soon’ when they expect to be on the air?
As for ‘excess capacity’ one of the strong advantages of SW is that you are NOT subject to the whims of other governments to get your signal out. What if Raul doesn’t think leasing time to RNV is as good an idea as Fidel did and pulls the plug? What happens if he leases time on Bonaire, and the VoA comes in as says to RN ‘hey, we’ll pay you double if you kick them off’ etc. etc. not to mention jamming. If you want to CONTROL the distribution SW is the way to do it, but with the Internet audio and relay agreements abounding these days, news of a new SW transmitter is a welcome change to the doom and gloom ‘SW is dead’ mantra!