Radio CAE

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Radio CAE (Radio Canadian Army Europe) was a Canadian soldier broadcaster in Germany that was part of the Canadian Forces Network as a broadcasting service for Canadian military personnel stationed in Europe . The transmitter started in 1956 in the Victoria Barracks on a hill in the city forest of the city of Werl (Westphalia) and broadcast until October 18, 1970 on VHF with a transmission power of 250 watts on the frequency 87.8 MHz. The transmitter supplied around 16,000 Canadian army members with their families in Westphalia and could be received within a radius of more than 60 km. The station found far more listeners among the German audience. The densely populated Ruhr area and the Münsterland were recorded as well as the front Sauerland and the southern Teutoburg Forest , so that several 100,000 people could listen to Radio CAE. With rock 'n' roll , beat and country music, the channel, which is particularly popular with young people , conveyed the musical zeitgeist better than the established German broadcasters at the time.

The station was closed in 1970 with the relocation of the Canadian troops to Lahr / Black Forest . There was the Canadian soldier channel CFN Lahr. He took over parts of the studio technology, the sound archive and several employees of Radio CAE. The military facilities in and around Werl and Soest were then taken over by the British Army. The CAE radio house in the Victoria Barracks served from then on as a telephone switchboard and the transmitter itself as a relay station for the main transmitter of the BFBS (Langenberg, 96.5 MHz, 50 kW), which significantly improved reception in the front Sauerland. The 100 meter high radio mast of Radio CAE, visible from afar, was therefore retained until 1991. Then it was dismantled in the course of the final withdrawal of British troops from the garrisons in the eastern Ruhr area.

The station building of Radio CAE and all other facilities of the Victoria Barracks stood empty for 26 years and gradually overgrown. In autumn 2018 the city of Werl began to renovate the site and transform it into a recreational area.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Demolition of the former military barracks in the Werler Stadtwald in the Soester Anzeiger on December 14, 2018