Sitkūnai transmitter
The transmitter Sitkūnai (lit. Sitkūnų radijo stotis ) is a broadcast station in Lithuania in Sitkūnai , 17 km north of the Lithuanian second largest city Kaunas . The station is operated by the Lithuanian company AB “ Lietuvos radijo ir televizijos centras”.
history
In June 1926, the first Lithuanian radio program went on air in Kaunas , but only a few parts of the country could be covered by the small station in the city. As a result, the Lithuanian government decided in 1937 to build a new transmitter in Sitkūnai north of Kaunas. By 1939, all the transmitter buildings were finished, in the same year Lithuania ordered the actual transmitter, a 120 kW medium wave transmitter, from the British company Standard Telephones and Cables . However, due to the outbreak of World War II, the delivery never came and the transmitter could not be put into operation.
The broadcasting buildings survived the Second World War almost unscathed. Since the radio coverage of what was now the Lithuanian SSR was very poor, the Soviet Union claimed the station in Zeesen near Berlin , which had only been built a few years earlier, as a reparation payment, completely dismantled it and rebuilt it in Sitkūnai. There the transmitter served as a short and medium wave transmitter system from 1951. The foreign program of the USSR, later the state-run Lithuanian program, was broadcast through him. During the Cold War, the location of the station was obscured by numerous misleading labels.
On Bloody Sunday in Vilnius in 1991, the Sitkūnai radio station replaced the Vilnius television tower , which was occupied by the Soviet army.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the station was used for a long time to broadcast Lithuanian programs abroad on the shortwave frequency 9710 kHz. It was not until 1999 that the transmitter from the Third Reich was replaced by a new transmitter from Continental Electronics , and in 2000 a new mast was built for broadcasts to North America.
In 2008 Lithuania stopped its international broadcasting due to cost reasons. Since then, only foreign services from other countries and some Christian stations such as Radio HCJB from Sitkūnai have been broadcast.
The broadcasts finally ended on March 25, 2017. Up until this date, Radio Free Asia still used the broadcasting site for a few hours at night for broadcasts to China in order to bypass the jammers there.
Web links
- Babtai. 610 metų Lietuvos istorijoje
- Sitkūnų radijo stoties įranga
- First part of the translation of January 13, 1991 ( Vilnius Blood Sunday )
- Second part of the translation of January 13, 1991 ( Vilnius Blood Sunday )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sausio 13-osios didvyriams atminti - Šiaulių auksarankio kūrinys ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Daily newspaper Lietuvos rytas )
- ↑ Sender Sitkūnai: Shortwave operation in Lithuania discontinued ( memento of the original from April 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 55 ° 2 ′ 33.7 ″ N , 23 ° 48 ′ 16.9 ″ E