Latvia’s Hams Honor Nation’s First Broadcast Radio at 100
/The broadcast and the amateur radio worlds have often overlapped, especially sharing many of the same people behind the microphone or behind the scenes. In Latvia, hams are taking part in a celebration that marks 100 years of that nation's first radio station.
The hams who were calling CQ as YL100LR until the 2nd of November were sharing the story of Rigas Radiofons, which went on the air in 1925 with a 2 kW transmitter, two 45-meter-high antenna towers and equipment purchased from France. From its studio inside a post office building in Riga city, the state-owned station began its life on the air with a two-hour broadcast that included the Puccini opera, "Madame Butterfly", and a speech by Minister of Transport J. Pauluks.
The evolution of radio broadcasting in Latvia is closely tied to that of amateur radio there: When the Latvian Radio Society helped create the Radio Subscribers Law, they created a category for radio experimenters who eventually became the nation's hams. From the start, hams were big supporters of the newly created broadcast station. In fact, by 1926, a spare transmitter at the station was being used for ham radio communications. The relationship remains strong to this day, and many amateur radio operators in Latvia are also broadcast radio professionals.
