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Sunday, August 16, 2026

Why is Lahti on the Dial of the Receiver? Where is Lahti?

I have seen Schenectady and even Springfeld (see below!) but Lahti was new to me. I spotted it yesterday on the dial of the receiver that the fellow from the UK was fixing. Lahti? What was that? 

Turns out, this is a European Longwave thing. 

Gemini explains: 

When you see Lahti printed on the dial of an older radio, it is typically marking a Longwave (LW) broadcast frequency rather than a shortwave frequency.

The presence of Lahti on the dial relates to several historical factors:

  • The Lahti High-Power Station: Located in Lahti, Finland, the national broadcaster Yle operated a massive, high-power longwave transmission station on "Radio Hill" (Radiomäki) starting in the late 1920s. Because of its central location and immense power (reaching up to 200 kW in later years), its signal could blanket all of Finland and carry across northern Europe.

  • Dial Navigation: On older European and world-band radio dials, manufacturers frequently printed the names of major high-power European broadcasting cities (such as Lahti, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, or Droitwich) directly onto the glass or metal scale. Because consumers tuned radios by city or wavelength rather than just abstract kilohertz numbers, these city names served as benchmark reference points for specific frequencies (such as Lahti's long-standing assignment on the longwave band, which eventually settled on 252 kHz).

  • The Era of "All-Wave" and Multi-Band Radios: Older vintage receivers—particularly those manufactured in Europe or targeted at international markets—often featured multiple bands spanning Longwave, Medium Wave (AM), and Shortwave. Even if a radio is broadly referred to as a "shortwave" or multi-band radio, its dial layout almost always incorporated the Longwave band where powerhouse European utility and broadcasting stations like Lahti lived prior to the widespread decommissioning of European LW transmitters in the late 20th century.


The old dial on my wife's grandfather's receiver

7 comments:

  1. Yes , Lahti , I have been there. It is a incredible place , and a ideal location for a country wide broadcast site. They now have a radio and TV museum there that is a very interesting visit. Now days Finland has gone in the opposite direction to cover the country with radio. Now they use a myriad of small transmitters that cover towns and other populated areas with FM only - Medium Wave , Longwave and Shortwave are a distant history.

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  2. Interesting, but little too much "IA digested" for me.
    I Prefer : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahti_longwave_transmitter

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    1. Some folks prefer to not use web browsers, or wikipedia, or blogs, or those computer things of any kind. That is an option OM!

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  3. The 252kHz frequency of the Lahti transmitter is now used by Arctic 252 in Inari.
    The ham angle to this is that the transmitter is a Nautel D2000.
    Which, when googled reveals itself as an NDB transmitter and not some AM broadcast rig. The old NDB transmitters were sold off about a decade a go very cheaply. In the realm of 50 - 100eur/pcs for the transmitter+atu+antenna, local pickup only.
    The transmitter for Arctic252 needed a new channel crystal and the search for it was extensive. And a call for them went out on the local amateur radio circles to see if someone had a suitable crystal in their junkbox.
    Well, at the Kauniainen Amateur radio club (OH2K) we had some surplus Chinese market 350MHz Nokia RD72 mobile radios.
    And those things had some 4032kHz crystals in them.
    When divided by 16000 that ends up being 252kHz. :)
    The crystals were desoldered and mailed off to Inari.
    And now the transmitter is on-air with those.
    When divided by 16000 drift is not a problem!
    We'll see if they'll build a more frequency agile synthesiser if they get assigned a new long wave frequency later, but 252kHz does have a nice legacy.

    Their site is arcticradio.net

    Cheers,
    - Ismo, OH2FTG

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  4. The ITU Ground Conductivity Map places Lahti at about 5mS/m which is very good. According to the FCC, Bill, you and I are stuck around 2mS/m, not as good, but go toward your Bay and it gets better. I enjoy operating portable in NNY (Potsdam) which is ~4mS/m with low-noise. The "Low Countries" see 10~30 mS/m (!) No wonder Hilversum, Holland had "The Happy Station" for years on SW, unless it was something else making for the happy disposition!

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  5. Appreciate the article but very difficult to see the images as an FYI. Need a bit higher resolution to see them.

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