Several people have asked me, why there are 3 different entries
- Shannon Aero, Shannon Volmet, and
Shanwick Aero? It's a quite philosophical
question... technically, all 3 stations mentioned are using the
same transmitter plant, Ballygirreen in the Republic of Ireland,
a few miles north of Shannon airport. The differentiation is the
purpose and the control over the 3 stations mentioned.
-
Shannon Aero is the station for the aeronautical
traffic controlled by Shannon airport, it was 'Shannon Aeradio'
for ground/air traffic (since 1966 conducted by Shanwick), and
'Shannon AFTN' for fixed radiolinks between Shannon on the one
and Iceland, Gander, New York, and Santa Maria on the other end.
All transmissions of Shannon Aero on shortwave have gone.
-
Shannon Volmet is still active, transmitting aviation
weather data of several european cities for aircraft on shortwave,
one of the most wellknown utility radio stations here. For the
actual transmission schedule look here, at the bottom of the page.
-
Shanwick Aero nowadays is the oceanic control centre
for all flights on the north atlantic tracks. They are very active,
because the number of flights across the atlantic is rising and
rising. While the transmitting station is, as said, in Ballygirreen,
Ireland, the control centre is physically located in Prestwick,
Scotland, Great Britain. The name 'Shanwick' is made up as a
combination of 'Shannon' and 'Prestwick'. For more
details, look here and here .
- - -
a recording from 1971 announcing as 'Shannon Aeradio' (rb)
here they announce as 'Shannon Volmet' (Willi Passmann, 1978)
Andy Schmid received this inviting recipe for Irish Coffee on
his verification (1973)
in 1974, they recognized that a QSL might help raising tourism
(Frank Schüttig)
here a nice QSL card (Tom Rösner, 1978)
this tourist-folder was used in 1982, here verifying the RTTY service of the AFTN (rb)
from 1983, here the announcement of frequency changes as sent
by AFTN telex message
again, Frank Schüttig received another nice looking tourist
folder in 1983
in 1998, they sent out a rather plain QSL letter (Vladimir Rozhkov)
the most modern way of QSLing: letter-file by email... (Gabriel
Schwartz, 2007)
------------------------------------------------------------
Callsigns:
EIAA
EIP
Frequencies Voice:
2889
3413
5505
5533
5559
5640
8833
8957
13264
13312
.