SWLD.com.au to close in 2025

[VK3YMML]

Source: https://swld.com.au/

Note: We have mirrored the website at https://vicscan.com/swld/ and have reached out to Mike to see if we can assist

SWLD will be closing down in 2025

After 26 years of providing Australian and Pacific HF Frequencies to Shortwave Listeners. Our funding has dwindled down to nothing for the last 2 years from both the google ads or donations and we cannot afford to renew the domain registration and hosting. If you need to download copies of frequency lists please do so as our email has now been disabled. There will be no tech support or email after we go offline.

Thankyou to the many contributors over the years - especially those in the defence arena who have shared valuable information. To those who have reached out I thank you for your assistance and for acting in the HAM radio spirit.
To those who provided financial support you have kept this resource online for a massive 26 years! You know who you are and thankyou.

This site has been both a burden and a labour of love at different times. We have been the target of Government harassment and intimidation - both domestic and foreign - which has been difficult to cope with over the last 26 years. When you're under the government microscope nothing is private and my life as well as others around me have had the grubby fingerprints of the back halls of government intruding into our lives. The stories I have from the last 26 years would be enough to blow up an ABC special that's for sure.
The future for HF radio is not in doubt - new systems are incorporating digital modes and HF is a reliable backup for vulnerable satellite and IT systems. There will always be utility and military use of HF radio.

Unfortunately thanks to the short sightedness of the Australian government, our national and international shortwave radio station - Radio Australia - was shut down in the last few years of the Turnbull government. A strategically dumb move to save a couple million dollars a year in exchange for a massive loss of influence and assistance to our island neighbours in the Pacific which has now seen the governments of those nations shift towards the Chinese government for support in exchange for military real estate in the Pacific sphere.

With the future of SWLD already decided, I urge the dedicated SWLers to stay with the hobby, keep lobbying for the transmitters to stay on the air.

Because one day, and it will be an awful day, shortwave radio will be the last tech standing.

SWLD 1999-2025

73s Mike
VK2YD