Tuesday, February 10, 2009

WNE: New US Commercial Medium-Frequency Station

The historic old medium-frequency maritime band continues to be repopulated with new commercial stations seeking to keep this heritage alive. This information comes from Richard Dillman at KSM/KPH/K6KPH:

Another new US coast station has been granted a license for operation in the MF maritime mobile band.

OM Steve Russell of Stoneham, MA has been granted the very fitting call WNE for his station with authorization for 5000W on 500kc and 472kc in the name of the New England Historical Radio Society, Inc. Steve will be building the station "from the ground up", as he puts it. Erection of the antenna will have to await until temperatures rise a bit but the base for it has already been installed.

WNE joins two other recently licensed stations, KDR (Bellevue, WA on 500kc and 482kc) and WFT (Palmetto, FL on 500kc and 486kc), as part of the re-population of the MF maritime mobile band with commercially licensed stations.

"We have a lot of work to do and any input, suggestions, questions or donations will be greatly appreciated to make this happen" says Steve. We at the MRHS applaud the effort Steve has made to obtain his license and his willingness to take on the job of building a new commercial coast station. His efforts and those of Joseph Venable of WFT and James Dalke of KDR are major steps toward keeping commercial Morse alive in this most historic portion of the radio spectrum.

VY 73,

RD