Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

Austria’s Historic Moosbrunn Shortwave Site Dismantled

A 320-ton rotating curtain antenna, in service since 1983, was brought down with a controlled explosion as part of the site’s decommissioning

The 320-ton rotating curtain antenna in Moosbrunn, Austria, was dismantled this week as part of the decommissioning of the historic shortwave radio site, according to reporting from the Austrian newspaper Der Standard.

Moosbrunn shortwave antenna site
Moosbrunn shortwave antenna site, from a newsletter sent out by the Austrian town’s mayor, Paul Frühling.

The antenna, located south of Vienna, had been in service since 1983, and the Moosbrunn site overall had been used since 1959, according to reporting from the German media outlet Heise Online.

The process began last fall and the unique antenna was “successfully dismantled using a precise, targeted explosion,” according to a press release from the ORS, a subsidiary of the Austrian public broadcaster ORF.

Heise Online quoted Michael Kastelic (OE1MCU), president of the Austrian Experimental Radio Association, as saying that the decision by ORF was “extremely regrettable” and pointed out the service the shortwave signal still provided in places like Russia, where listening to foreign broadcasts is otherwise difficult. 

A petition to save the historic site received approximately 3,000 online signatures.

According to Heise Online, Radio Österreich International programs were broadcast from the site until it was shut down in 2003. The shortwave transmitter was still used as a relay transmitter for international broadcasters through 2024.

[Subscribe to Radio World Engineering Extra]

Close