After over 12 years of radio silence, one of Israel's all-time favourite radio stations for nighttime listening is back on the air! Broadcasting the same "golden oldies" from the previous Gulf War, it's the station sensation that's in tune with this Gulf War!
Live from, well, somewhere, it's...
SILENT RADIO!!!1!
This is a truly unique listening experience. Going one up on Seinfeld, a show about nothing, this radio station actually broadcasts nothing. An almost uninterrupted silence. The only planned interruptions are occasional repeated voice announcements, like the one broadcast as I type. After all, you'd hate to be listening to the wrong station, wouldn't you?
It's still part of the Voice of Israel radio network, of course, so any emergency interruptions will get broadcast. Little things like, say, an air raid siren, followed by instructions on civilian defence against chemical warfare, details about the attack, when to take off your gas mask, and the like.
What's it good for? It's the only radio station you can keep on, at full volume, during all hours of the day and night. This one lets you sleep while listening to it full blast. Because -- despite the fact that my country is not fighting this war, despite protestations of the international community that Saddam Hussein has no chemical weapons or Scud or Al-Hussein missiles, and despite protestations of the USA and our military forces that there is no way he'll get a chance to deploy and fire them at us -- sometimes it pays to be a bit over-cautious.
After all -- last time round, they said much the same thing, and I saw the Scud missiles coming in. No chemical warheads, so the gas masks we wore were redundant, but being awake and ready, not to mention being in an air raid shelter during the later stages, is a Good Idea™.
Technicalities
Silent radio is broadcast over the frequencies normally used by "A wave" (reshet alef), which nobody listens to anyway.
AM frequencies are, in KHz:
North 576
Jerusalem 1458
Centre 576
Eilat 1458
FM frequencies are, in
MHz:
North 102.8
Zafed 100.7
Haifa 97.2
Centre and
Jerusalem 98.4
Tel Aviv 100.7
Be'er Sheva 100.7
My personal recommendation is by all means to try to listen to the FM radio signal. Not just for the Dolby 5-way digitally remastered silence. More due to the fact that you can broadcast silence on frequency modulation: it's just the unadulterated carrier wave. With amplitude modulation, you're broadcasting zero signal, so your radio will always be picking up the noise, and you'll have trouble sleeping.
Sleep well, and I hope we never hear a programme on silent radio.