Breaking news: Irmeli Virtanen, OH3TJ, SK

OH3TJ, Irmeli Virtanen, Finland's leading YL DXer with 369 countries (12th in Finland), has passed away at the age of 89. Irmeli was the wife of OH3VV, Vilho "Willy" Virtanen, who is Finland' top DX with a DXCC count of 381. During Finland's "Winter War," Irmeli served with the Finnish Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit in the city of Vyborg in the province of Karelia, which was ceded to Russia at the end of the war

Welcome in the Documentary Archives!

The story so far...

It is true. Our full name is not that easy to remember: "Documentary Archive for the History of Radio Communication and Electronic Media". But it explains in one sentence exactly who we are, what we do, our aims and ambitions.
We’re passionate about radio. We’re also passionate about ensuring that great radio stories are preserved for future generations. Thanks to global support, we’ve managed to create a unique place where radio history comes alive. It is an active collection, in constant use.
We were founded more than twenty years ago as a non-profit Institute. We’re staffed by volunteers, many of whom have been professionals in the broadcast and communications industry. But because we know that many people have entrusted their personal heritage to us, we run the institute along professional lines (i.e. a Board of Governors oversees the collection policy and that donations to the work are properly administered.)
Our headquarters are on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria. We’re proud of our Austrian heritage. But we also stress that our focus is global. We started out as the International QSL Collection Foundation. Since then the range of documentation we keep, catalogue and preserve has grown to cover a wide range of broadcast and amateur radio history. We thrive on active supported from individuals, amateur radio societies, broadcasters and broadcast listeners, archives, historians, publishers, enterprises etc. from on all continents. We encourage people to visit and use the archives, either in person, or virtually through the Internet. A board oversees our collections and archives, and keeps an eye on all projects.

Our archives and collections
We collect whatever relates to the history of radio (with the sole exception of “hardware”: we are not a radio museum!) With seven million objects filed, we are the world’s largest organization of its kind, and the only one with such a wealth of interdisciplinary collections:
We have various sections, as follows:
• The Documentary Unit is a unique and gigantic global data base of letters, public and private records, research files and similar archival material, supplemented by a photo collection and a library of books and magazines. This includes the Oskar Czeija Remembrance Funds, named after the founder of Austrian broadcasting, is devoted entirely to the history of radio in Austria.
• The audio-visual archives consist of thousands of films, videos, private and broadcast tapes and discs – and downloads of the most perishable medium, the Internet. With daily updates of broadcast footage it it is always up-to-date
• The collection of QSL cards, awards, and logbooks, covers the entire era from pioneer days to today. - The YASME-Colvins collection of almost a million cards is the largest individual amateur radio collection of all times.
• We do not buy or sell but rely entirely on donations. Individuals have given us treasures unearthed at home, donated parts of their private collections, or, as we prefer, bequeathed material to us during their lifetime. We receive bequests, exchange items of which we have multiple exemplars with other archives etc. All projects and overheads are financed entirely by charitable donations. Whatever we keep is available to the public, and everybody is welcome, at any time, to contact us for an appointment.

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A Guided Video Tour

Jonathan Marks visited us in the old premises (Video in English):

Part one:


Part two:


Our new premises YouTube Video in German (Watch it, anyway)



And a farewell to where we had been before YouTube Video in German ext. Link

German now - English soon

We have just finished the re-launch of our web presentation in German, with the English pages to follow, step by step. There is a whole lot more to find and enjoy on our German pages, and we invite you to take a look at them even if you do not speak German. - We urgently need native speakers to volunteer in editing and/or translating our German content.

Site Navigation

An overview

Home General information / Guided Tour / Who we are and what we do / Team, members and sponsors / Membership application (available soon) / Links to related sites (available soon) / Glossary (to follow later) / Reviews of interesting books and publications in English (just started) / Projects (available soon)
Amateur Radio Rare DXCC entities / History of amateur radio / Prominent personalities / Research files
Broadcast Research files / lists of publications, sound and video files available in the public section or for members only / Oskar Czeija-Gedächtnisfonds (History of Austrian Radio - German only)
Virtual Museum Picture galleries / Virtual Art Museum / Rarissima and curiosities
Archive Have and wanted lists / information about our data bases / lists of books, magazines, documents, reference sources of all kinds available in the public section or for members only
Members All the material available for members only (membership application: 'Join us!' in the Home portal section)

How to navigate

• Highlighted Country Flags in the top task bar: indicating in which languages the article/s is/are available.
• Every section has a "home page", introducing its contents - to choose click on the blue vertical task bar.
• Articles are split into chapters with basic information. For additional text / pictures / sound or audio files click at read on
• Pictures: Enlarge them with a mouse click and read the full caption.
• Picture galleries: Click and browse
• Let the mouse hover over the word to open the glossary (under construction)
• Many tables and lists may be downloaded as Excel, PDF or .DOC file
• Search engine (Magnifying glass in the top bar): The first line (underlinded) leads to the section or article page, the following lines lead directly to the search results word by word (yellow marker)
• Contact Us (Top task bar): available from every page of our web site
• Update marker: Date of last update