Sender Zehlendorf or Zehlendorf (radio) transmission facility was a radio transmission facility which was in service since 1936, when a short wave transmitter was built on the occasion of the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics in Zehlendorf (a village near Oranienburg) as part of the establishment of permanent radio services. This Zehlendorf site, which until the end of World War II was referred to as the Rehmate Radio Transmission Centre (German : Funksendestelle Rehmate), had 26 different antennas at the time (that is, before and at the end of World War II).
In 2017 the last antenna at the site was demolished by controlled implosion, ending the era of the transmission towers in Zehlendorf. [1]
In 1945, most of the Rehmate Radio Transmission Centre was dismantled by the Soviet occupying forces as reparation, who left only three wooden radio masts. Two of these wooden masts supplied the building material for a 100-metre-tall transmission tower built at Golm in 1948, which was used until 1979.
In 1952 it was decided to build at the location of the former radio transmission center Rehmate the central long wave transmitter of the GDR. For this between 1956 and 1958 a triangle plane aerial, which was hung up on three 150 metres high guyed masts of lattice steel, which were insulated against ground, was built. A second transmitting antenna, which would become the main antenna, was built between 1960 and 1962. It consisted of a 351-metre-high (1,152 ft), lattice steel framework mast, at which a conical cage aerial was mounted, making it the tallest structure in Europe between 1962 and 1964. With this antenna a transmitting power of 750 kilowatts in the long-wave range on a frequency, which was reduced in course of the time gradually for the reduction by interference from 185 kHz to 177 kHz, was possible. The maximum transmitting power, which was possible over the triangle plane aerial, was 500 kilowatts.
On 18 May 1978 the main mast collapsed after being struck by a Russian airplane of the type Mig-21. After the cause of the collapse was certain, the Soviet Union promised to supply a new mast and to rebuild the mast. In order not to stop the progress of the construction work by the stricter German safety regulations, for the duration of the construction work the area in the radius of 300 metres was explained as Soviet exclave. In August 1979 the new mast with a height of 359.7 metres was finished.
In 1990 the plant was taken over by the Deutsche Telekom AG. At first it was planned to shut down the facility: so the cage aerial at the 359.7-metre-high (1,180 ft) main mast was dismantled and the transmitting power of the long wave transmitter was reduced occasionally to 100 kilowatts. In the second half of the 1990s a reorientation occurred. The long wave transmitter was modernized and the main antenna tower received a new cage aerial. Also the transmitting power of the long wave transmitter was increased again to 500 kW. In the year 2000 a 129-metre-high (423 ft), guyed, grounded mast of lattice steel carrying a cage aerial for medium wave was built. This took over the function of the former Transmitter Berlin-Koepenick and served apart from the spreading of the program of MEGARADIO also for transmitting of programs of the Voice of Russia, partly in the Simulcast mode.
The long wave transmitter changed over on 29 August 2005 as first German large transmitter to Digital Radio Mondiale. The long wave transmitter ceased operation on December 31, 2014 as part of the general shutdown in Germany of AM radio services to the public. [2] The mast continued to support VHF radio antennas providing FM broadcast services.
The triangle plane antenna masts (3 of them, 150 meters high each) were demolished in 2007, with the antenna itself having been taken out of service in 2003.
In 2015, the 129-meter mast was demolished; transmission from it had ceased in 2014.
The last mast (the highest, main mast of 359.7 meters height) at the site was demolished in 2017, and radio operations at the site ended.
The Sender Donebach was a 500-kilowatt long wave radio transmitter operating on 153 kHz and transmitting the program of German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. The facility, which was the property of Media Broadcast, was built between 1965 and 1967 on a former airfield, and entered service on March 10, 1967.
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The Transmitter Ismaning was a large radio transmitting station near Ismaning, Bavaria, Germany. It was inaugurated in 1932. From 1932 to 1934 this transmitter used a T-antenna as transmitting antenna, which was spun between two 115-metre-high free-standing wooden lattice towers, which were 240 metres apart. As this antenna had an unfavourable vertical radiation pattern, which produced much skywave resulting in a too small fading-free reception area at night, in 1934 a new antenna was installed. Therefore, one of the towers was dismantled and rebuilt on a 39-metre-high (128 ft) wooden lattice base. While this work took place, an L-Antenna was used, which was spun between the other tower and a small auxiliary wooden tower. It became defunct in 1977 and was destroyed in 1983.
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Goliath transmitter was a very low frequency (VLF) transmitter for communicating with submarines, built by Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine navy near Kalbe an der Milde in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, which was in service from 1943 to 1945. It was capable of transmission power of between 100 and 1000 kW and was the most powerful transmitter of its time.
The Wiederau transmitter is the oldest broadcasting facility in Saxony. It is located near Wiederau, a village which is part of the municipality of Pegau, and is used for medium-wave, FM and Television broadcasting.
Golm transmitter or Sender Golm was a medium wave broadcasting facility on the area of a former Reichsarbeitsdienst officer candidate school at Kuhforter Damm in Golm near Potsdam. It entered service in 1948 as the central broadcast transmitter for Brandenburg state. Until 1979 it used a wooden lattice tower of 98 m (322 ft) height with a horizontal wooden cross on its top as its antenna support. The ends of the beams of this cross were connected with wires. From the centre of each of these horizontal wires, a vertical wire was run down to the antenna tuner which was located in a building under the feet of the tower construction. The antenna of Golm transmitter consisted therefore of 4 T-antennas connected in parallel, forming an omnidirectional antenna with a natural wavelength of 528 m. The transmitter was built from second-hand parts obtained by dismantling a site in Reichenbach, Upper Lusatia. Test transmissions were undertaken on 16 April 1948, and from 1 May 1948 the facility operated on 564 kHz.
Marnach transmitter was a broadcasting facility of RTL near Marnach in the commune of Clervaux, in northern Luxembourg. The Marnach transmitter was built in 1955 for improving the transmission of the English-speaking program on 1439 kHz, which was transmitted from 1951 with an omnidirectional antenna from Junglinster, to the British Isles and for a better transmission on this frequency to Germany at daytime. Therefore, it was given a directional antenna with a switchable directional characteristic pointing north-northeast towards the Rhine-Ruhr area, Germany's most populated area, and west-northwest in the direction of the UK. This antenna was implemented in form of a directional antenna consisting of three ground-fed 105-metre-tall (350 ft) guyed mast antennas arranged in the form of an isosceles triangle with a 90-degree angle. As transmitters, two 100 kW units switched in parallel were used when it went in service in December 1955.
Berlin-Köpenick transmitter was a transmission facility for broadcasting on medium wave, short wave, and VHF in Berlin-Köpenick, Germany, near the suburb of Uhlenhorst, after which it was occasionally named.