Radio Taiwan International in German on 5900 kHz: Taipei via Kostinbrod

What you hear

From 19:00 to 19:30 UTC, 5900 kHz carries Radio Taiwan International in German. The half hour is a classic external-service magazine: news from Taiwan and East Asia, with the relationship to mainland China never far away, followed by features on Taiwanese culture, society, technology and travel, listener mail, and Taiwanese music, from Mandarin and Taiwanese pop to indigenous songs. The German is fluent and the tone friendly; RTI's German service has a loyal following of listeners who write in, and the programme talks back to them. The station identifies as "Radio Taiwan International" with its signature.

At the same hour the French service goes out on 6005 kHz from the same site, and earlier in the evening, at 17:00 UTC, the Russian service uses 9790 kHz. Listen a few minutes before 19:00 UTC on 5900 kHz and you will hear a different programme in English: the frequency is shared, and RTI's half hour is a slot in someone else's day.

Who transmits and why

Radio Taiwan International is the external broadcaster of the Republic of China on Taiwan, based in Taipei, with a history going back to the 1920s on the mainland and to 1949 on the island. Its own transmitters stand in Taiwan and serve Asia; for Europe it buys relay time, and the German, French and Russian programmes come through the commercial transmitting station at Kostinbrod near Sofia, Bulgaria, the German service on a 100 kW transmitter. A Bulgarian relay puts a clean signal into central Europe in one hop instead of a weak one across all of Asia. The purpose is plain: Taiwan has few diplomatic channels, and radio in European languages is one of the ways it keeps a voice in Europe. In some summers RTI has also run short series of direct transmissions from its own site at Tamsui for German-speaking listeners, announced separately and treated as an event by the audience.

When and where to listen

The German slot is 19:00 to 19:30 UTC, early evening in Europe, and 5900 kHz lies in the 49 metre band, open across Europe at that hour in every season. From Bulgaria the beam reaches Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the intended audience, at good strength; receivers there and in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary hear it best, while western and northern Europe get a usable signal with some fading. The French parallel on 6005 kHz behaves the same way. The 9790 kHz Russian slot at 17:00 UTC is in the 31 metre band and is a daytime-to-dusk signal, strongest towards Eastern Europe.

The catalogue mode is AM. The sharing of 5900 kHz means the half hour starts and ends abruptly; if a neighbour crowds the channel, upper or lower sideband with a narrow filter helps.

In ShackDeck

The entry sits under Station catalogue → Shortwave broadcast → Radio Taiwan International in German 5900. ShackDeck picks a public receiver whose range covers 5900 kHz, tunes it and sets AM from the catalogue; no receiver, antenna or account of your own is required. Start a minute before 19:00 UTC to hear the changeover from the previous programme to the RTI signature.