Overseas radio reception center Lüchow

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Overseas radio reception center Lüchow, main building (2019)
ÜEFuSt Lüchow (Lower Saxony)
ÜEFuSt Lüchow
ÜEFuSt Lüchow
Localization of Lower Saxony in Germany
The location of the former overseas radio receiving center of the Deutsche Bundespost in Lüchow, Lower Saxony

The Lüchow Übersee- Funkempfangsstelle (ÜFESt or ÜEFuSt) was one of the large radio reception centers of the German Federal Post Office for civil telecommunications between 1948 and 1987 . It was used to handle teletype, telegram and telephone services worldwide via shortwave radio .

Emergence

Until 1932, all overseas radio connections were operated by the radio operating company Transradio . The main radio stations of this company were the transmitting radio station Nauen and the receiving radio station Beelitz near Berlin.

Because of the growing overseas radio traffic, the then Reichspostzentralamt felt compelled to start planning work for a new receiving station in 1937. Various areas were examined for suitability during the planning phase. There were several conditions involved: far away from sources of interference of any kind (industry, high-voltage systems, large settlements, etc.) and the best possible soil conductivity. The choice fell on a swampy terrain in Wendland, east of the city of Lüchow, a little north of the village of Woltersdorf and far away from larger settlements. A total of approx. 600  ha was acquired. The area is drained through the Lucie Canal towards the Jeetzel .

Construction of the station building began in 1938/39; they were completed in 1942. The radio equipment, including the antennas, was supplied by Telefunken and set up in the years up to 1944. In December 1944, the receiving radio station officially went into operation. During the years up to 1947, the site was not used as an operating point for civil radio communications due to the war.

The operation

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Radio operation

It was not until the end of 1947 the originally planned civilian use began as an overseas destination radio station with the opening of the first telephony radio line Hamburg - Rio de Janeiro . It was followed by the line to Buenos Aires in May 1948 . At the end of 1948 there were already seven fixed radio lines overseas and the first European connections to Lisbon and Barcelona had gone into operation. The majority of the connections were telegraphy connections in which the transmission of telegrams was handled manually in Morse code. Until 1951, these were served by the coastal radio station Norddeich Radio (radio call sign DAN) in addition to the actual tasks of maritime radio .

Telegram service

From 1950 there were a total of 24 fixed radio lines, including to Ankara , Bangkok , Bombay , Buenos Aires , Cairo , Calcutta , Lima , Manila , Osaka and Seoul . At that time, an impressive 12,000-14,000 wireless telegrams were processed every month. To get an idea of ​​the qualifications of the radio operators, a 32-word telegram can be heard here as an example. The picture shows the telegram in paper form for the audio file. The telegrams had to be recorded without errors and, when they were recorded, they had to be written immediately with a typewriter or telex for transmission to the telegraph office in Hamburg. Not an easy task with a character speed of 125 characters / minute and reception impairments due to fading and background noise.

  • Example telegram with 32 words

  • Audio sample: This telegram in Morse code with 125 characters / min over shortwave

The example is only about 90 seconds long. One shift, however, lasted eight hours, including short breaks. The quality of the telegram recording should not decrease in the course of a shift. This not only required a lot of practice, but also a special talent. In addition to the telegram acceptance, telegrams were also sent. The characters were given by hand with a Morse code key at the same pace. Because of its precision, the Junker MT Morse code was always used . Most of the radio operators previously worked in the sea or at a coast radio station.

In 1952, the last Morse telegraph connections to Rio and Lima were switched to radio telex and the highly qualified radio operators required up to that point were no longer necessary. The total number of radio lines rose to over 40 by 1953.

The end of shortwave transmission

Before the sister station ÜEFuSt Eschborn near Frankfurt was closed at the end of 1969, Lüchow took over the last eight lines from there. There were then 33 connections with a total of 8 telephone channels and 119 telex channels.

Since the beginning of the 1970s, shortwave radio has increasingly lost its importance due to the advancing global networking with overseas cable and satellite connections . At the end of 1973 there were only 20 lines in Lüchow and in 1986 only one telex connection to Kabul / Afghanistan . This was finally shut down as the last connection in the same year and thus the operation finally ceased.

Radio weather observation

In addition to the reception service for the telephone and telex lines, a radio weather observation center was set up in 1966 . At that time she took over the tasks from the position in Detmold . The collected radio weather data was passed on from here to the Central Telecommunications Office (FTZ) and there combined with the data from other bodies to form a radio weather forecast. It was not until the end of the 1970s that this service in Lüchow was given up for cost reasons and moved to the evaluation center in Darmstadt .

Operating modes

  • A1 Morse code in handset for transmission of telegrams
  • A1A Morse code machine recording
  • F1 telex reception, 1 channel
  • F6 / F6A telegraph reception, WTK with 2, 4 or 8 channels (WTK = alternating current telegraph device for shortwave radio links)
  • A3J telephony single sideband
  • A7A Teletype MUX single sideband with reduced carrier
  • A9B Reception of broadcasts with different sidebands and reduced carriers (telephony / telex)

Equipment park

Antennas

Spatial arrangement of the large diamonds at the Lüchow radio station (1953)

It started in 1949 with 3 horizontal dipoles, 13 large rhombuses for the frequency range from 6 to 26 MHz and an omnidirectional antenna. In 1950 the antenna park was expanded to include 8 dipoles, 17 rhombuses and a cross-frame antenna for long waves. In 1952 another 9 rhombuses followed. In the final stage, a total of 44 antennas were in operation. The associated antenna distributor ("antenna station") was housed in a circular extension to the receiving room. The floor was adorned with a compass rose, the orientation of which was roughly based on the assignment of the distributor with the antennas. The distributor was designed for the distribution of up to 100 antennas to 120 receivers. The rhombs had a design frequency of 18 MHz with a gain of approx. 20 dB. The antennas, each 180 m long, were suspended at a height of 21 m above the ground. 12 antennas could be used in both directions. For each direction there were two antennas with a distance of several wavelengths in the receiving direction so that they could be used for diversity reception. A specialty was the interconnection of two rhombuses (antennas 25 and 26 in the direction of 232 °) in a test arrangement by Telefunken to form a MUSA ( M ultiple U nit S teerable A ntenna) according to an invention by Harald T. Friis. The experiment was terminated for economic reasons, the antennas remained for further use on site.

The antennas with targets and distances

Receiving from Azimuth
degrees		 Distance
[km]		 Rhombus
no.		 Diversity
with no.
Oslo 6th 663 8th 7th
Stockholm 38 790 23 24
Helsinki 40 1161 23 24
Osaka 44 8879 23 24
Seoul 48 8187 23 24
Taipei 59 9041 21st 22nd
Manila 66 9966 21st 22nd
Moscow 70 1733 21st 22nd
Melbourne 80 16205 19th 20th
Bangkok 82 8767 19th 20th
Calcutta 86 7178 19th 20th
Bandung 88 11157 17th 18th
Kabul 90 4931 17th 18th
Karachi 101 5734 15th 16
Bombay 101 6423 15th 16
Tehran 105 3659 15th 16
Berlin 107 149 15th 16
Baghdad 116 3398 13 14th
Ankara 123 2185 11 12
Bucharest 125 1448 11 12
Beirut 128 2859 11 12
Jeddah 134 4383 9 10
Belgrade 140 1123 9 10
Cairo 140 3003 9 10
Vienna 140 805 9 10
Athens 145 1922 9 10
Addis Ababa 148 5324 9 10
Rome 170 1364 7th 8th
Cape Town 173 9811 7th 8th
Leopoldville 173 6506 7th 8th
Barcelona 205 1509 5 6th
Madrid 219 1800 3 4th
Rio de Janeiro 227 9911 3 4th
Buenos Aires 231 12023 1 2
Lisbon 234 2266 1 2
Asuncion 237 10881 1 2
Santiago 242 12373 22nd 21st
Lima 262 11109 20th 19th
Bogota 268 9182 18th 17th
new York 293 6063 14th 13
Montreal 297 5696 14th 13
Chicago 302 6780 12 11

receiver

In 1948 the equipment consisted of 30 Telefunken E459 large station receivers and was continuously expanded and renewed.

In 1969 there were 77 receivers installed:

  • 1 Telefunken long wave receiver EST 108 LW / R
  • 7 × 2 Telefunken diversity receivers EST 305 KW
  • 9 × 2 Siemens diversity receivers 2 KW 1/3
  • 8 Telefunken single sideband receiver EST304KW
  • 8 Siemens single sideband receivers KW 2/6
  • 8 × 2 Siemens double diversity receivers radio 125E101a
  • 5 × 2 Siemens double diversity receivers radio 125E103b

In the late 1970s, the first fully transistorized receivers were added with six Telefunken E1500 receivers.

Reuse

Remnants of the foundation of the container village (2019)

From 1979, the area was also used by the Lower Saxony police who were deployed in the protests against the nearby Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility and the Castor transports. After renovation work, these initially occupied some of the Üfest rooms. Later, additional container buildings were built in the outdoor area , which offered accommodation for up to 1000 emergency services. In the summer of 2005, the residential containers were destroyed by a major fire. During the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015/2016 , the area served as emergency accommodation for several hundred refugees. During this time, there were other smaller fires. The subsequent use as refugee accommodation ended on September 30, 2016.

literature

  • Ernst Bornemann: Bridge to the World: The Lüchow-Woltersdorf Overseas Radio Receiving Center. A chronicle from 1938 to 1988 . 1st edition. Projekt-Verlag Cornelius, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86634-485-3 .

Web links

Commons : Übersee-Funkempfangsstelle Lüchow  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Site plan of the Lüchow overseas radio reception center. Archived from the original on April 22, 2016 ; accessed on October 2, 2019 .
  2. ^ Hans-Georg Korth: History around telegraphy; Born 1944- December: Start-up Lüchow. Retrieved October 2, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Deutsche Telekom: Summary of the historical data on the coast radio station Norddeich Radio, 1951: Transfer of the last overseas radio services to Lüchow. Retrieved October 2, 2019 .
  4. ^ Overseas radio station in Eschborn, closed in 1970. Accessed on October 2, 2019 .
  5. ^ Reception radio lines of the Lüchow Overseas Reception Radio Station at the end of 1969. Archived from the original on April 20, 2016 ; accessed on October 2, 2019 .
  6. ^ Wilhelm Rawe, Member of the Bundestag: Answer to a request for the use of the land after the receiving office has been closed. German Bundestag, Drucksache 10/5457, p. 29, May 7, 1986, accessed on October 2, 2019 .
  7. ^ Carola McRae: The overseas radio reception center Lüchow-Woltersdorf (Üfest). www.damals-im-wendland.de, accessed on October 2, 2019 .
  8. ^ The "antenna station" (Siemens) of the ÜFESt Lüchow. Archived from the original on February 9, 2015 ; accessed on October 2, 2019 .
  9. ^ Layout plan of the recipients in Lüchow 1969. Archived from the original on April 22, 2016 ; accessed on October 2, 2019 .
  10. ^ Police headquarters Lüneburg, press office: Arson attack on Castor police container in Lüchow-Dannenberg. September 2005, accessed October 24, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Angelika Blank: Press report on incidents in the refugee camp. In: Wendland-net.de. October 7, 2015, accessed October 23, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Thanks from Lower Saxony's Minister of Justice to the refugee helpers. In: Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung, E_Paper. April 28, 2016. Retrieved October 23, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Woltersdorf volunteer fire brigade: Notes about fires in the refugee accommodation at ÜFEST. 2015, accessed October 23, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Jan: It remains the social work; Closure of refugee accommodation. In: ZufluchtWendland.de. August 15, 2016, accessed October 23, 2019 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 58 ′ 37.2 ″  N , 11 ° 13 ′ 27 ″  E