UKEsenderen Returns to FM

As mentioned in last week’s blog, UKEsenderen is an old ARK tradition. While the programming is maintained by what is now known as Radio Revolt – a part of the student media distribution here in Trondheim, the technical side and equipment was maintained by ARK from 1933 to 2001. This year marks the return to analogue broadcasting and ARKs help. Tune in to FM 103.00 and have a listen!

It’s been in the works for a few years to get our beacon QTH at Vassfjellet up to code. If you’ve read our blog the last few years you probably knew this. By chance, SM (which Radio Revolt is a part of) reached to us during this time interested in a collaboration, as Radio Metro was closing it’s FM broadcast in Trondheim and was selling off it’s equipment. A few delays with the QTH and a few technical issues at Radio Revolts audio feed later, “UKEsenderen” has been stable on FM during the whole UKA festival so far.

The equipment this time is not made in-house by ARK, but is reused broadcasting equipment from when NRK phased out FM in 2017 – a decision met by joy everywhere in the country. The setup consists of an NEC HPA-4536 FM Exciter, NEC HPA-3044 150W Power Amp and a NEC HPA-3060c 24V 20A PSU. Antenna wise, we are using a EuroCaster AKG/1M dipole antenna made of rigid steel, which hopefully should suffice the harsh conditions at Vassfjellet. The stream is received using a small computer in the rack, and then output using a semi-professional sound card into the exciter.

The conditions at the map below is an estimate of an radius at 100km.

ARK has also been a steady contributor to the student festival “UKA” for many years with a project that is less radio related. For every festival, the name of the revue is revealed at the midnight launch with an electric billboard. For the last couple of decades ARK has been responsible in constructing and programming the different sequences of the billboard. Other affiliated associations at the Student Society has also been responsible for constructing the billboard back in the day. Maybe we’ll write a more detailed post about this in the future as well.

Let’s conclude with the radio. We’d love to hear what you think, please send us your listener report to la1k@la1k.no. Perhaps a bit more relevant to the Norwegian HAMs this year, as the reach on FM is a tad bit shorter than AM during the night, and the spoken language. Also, a big thanks to LB0VG for providing the radio equipment, and literally maintaining the whole station.

Radio Revolt also transmits on DAB+ and streams the audio at their website. If you don’t live close by, you can check it out here.