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DAB in Ireland: RTE multiplex closed
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17-11-2003 11:52am#1
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Hmmm. Well I'm impressed!
It did work tonight, 100% quality signal in that location while outdoor on the BBC DAB mux from Divis. Also able to pick up BBC Radio on FM from 3 sites, Divis, Camlough and Kilkeel on the car radio. Considering the latter two are on 4kw and 200w respectfully, and watching Paxo doing Newsnight on nothing more than a handheld LCD TV, I'm flabbergasted!
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Just an update on this...
In March RTÉ announced this.. (Thanks Radiowaves.fm for link!)
I bought this in Newry on Friday....
A lovely piece of kit and as it had FM RDS too, I bought it. (OK I had my eye on it for quite a while!) In the car park of Currys, I was able to tune into the BBC national mux.
Again, as West Brit discovered, Killakee makes my DAB radio hum!
And today,in Longford (in the foothills of Cairn Hill) I was able to tune into the Score Digital mux, great reception there with its long telescopic aerial. My big test will be back home at the folks place. I think its possible. 0 -
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Right... update time....
News for Cavan, North Meath and Mid-Louth folk... its possible!
Time for a pic ...
I used the telescopic aerial only, on the Roberts DAB radio pictured above.
Firstly, you will need height. Loads of feet above sea level is desirable or the equivalent electricity pylon.
So lets look at the points marked on the map. The Black lines denote "as the crow flies" line from Divis, where the BBC National Mux broadcasts from.
1. Loughenlea Mountain, between Kingscourt and Bailieborough, Co. Cavan. This is the site of the old Eurovision link to the North for RTÉ, and its high up. Bailieborough is the 2nd highest town in Ireland, so I also tried on the main street. No look there, but up on the side of the mountain (great views) I got both the BBC and Score mux. The BBC was defo from Divis, but I dunno where Score came from. Unlikely Brougher, maybe Black Mountain, near Divis?
Signal Quality was excellent.
2. Moynalty, Co. Meath. Close to home, Not a sausage. But I wouldn't rule it completely out on account of....
3. Spire of Lloyd, Kells, Co. Meath. The Spire might not be open, (60 ft more would be nice!) but its a high spot in itself at the bottom, with clear views North. The BBC mux was gettable here only, no Score. With account for Moynalty, it is in-between Lloyd and Loughanlea in terms of LoS, so possibly with a big rig, you would get it.
4. Hunterstown, Ardee, Co. Louth. Here, you are on the N2, on the turn just south of the GAA pitch, on the north flank of Mount Oriel, with a great view North. Like Lloyd, BBC only, and reception was OK if a little bubbly, 40-50%. If it was any less, it would be unusable. Bubbly sounds are really signal dropouts, where the signal is weak. So an outdoor aerial is the best option here.
5. Killakee, Dublin Mountains.
As described before.... but just on this map, the signal travels comfortably 100 miles without interruption.
Other locations not on this map but have been known to get DAB, Score can be got at Cairn Hill in Longford and in around Sligo, from Brougher.
Something tells me a webpage with this info should be designed!
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Another weekend, another ramble... and some specatular results and some failures....
Same conditions as above.....
1. (beside Dun Laoighaire.)
Killiney Hill (car park).
Once you get a spot through the foliage... the BBC mux come through. Anyone who has as clear a view north as can be seen from the Car Park on Killiney Hill, you should be able to recieve it.
2. Mt. Leinster, Co. Carlow/Wexford.
Now... interesting this.... there are no real roads on the east side of the mountain, so I was unable to find out if anything will come through from Wales (which I doubt as none of the west Wales transmitters like Presely have DAB, Moel-y-Parc near Rhyl does).
BUT ASTONISHINGLY, a full 141 miles from Belfast, crystal clear BBC mux, and bubbly Score! And not even at the top at the transmitter, but on the way up and at the RTÉ locked gate.
Don't believe me?
Now the bad news....
Wicklow/Arklow 'fraid not, but willing to try if you have height and clear reception of Moel-y-Parc TV and Radio, you may have better LoS than I had from roadside tests.
Well, I'm still astonished! 0 -
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Very good.
You are at least 2000ft there ( you didn't climb the hill to the left of the RTÉ gate then... for another 3-400 ft or more... )
Bear in mind that athmospheric pressure is quite high at the moment which would have helped.
That said at 2000ft plus there aren't too many obstacles higher than that to the north of you once your start point is west of the wicklow mountains.
Obviously there are hills higher than that in the mournes but at the distance south that you were and your point inland a line of sight or a waving signal( one that slips out by the side of hills once you are far enough away from them ie not in their shadow ) could be coming into play
Croghan mountain would be an interesting trial point as it has a commanding view over the entire east,North east and south East of the Irish sea as well as to the North up to the Sugarloaf, though with some significant mountains in the way as you look north...
Mind you that doesn't always stop signals from the north and north west as we know down here in Arklow with cairn hill coming through.
Anyways for another day.0 -
Not surprising on mt leinster, freeview can easily be got from Divis as well as Presely & others in wales there, no amps, etc required. They've even got a freeview box hooked up to the tv in the kitchen, which works perfectly all year round, which is quite amazing considering the way the tuner would be desensed by its close proximity to the transmitting antennas. I know it isnt DAB, but I'm just commenting on whats possible from the site. It is afterall, the highest transmission site in Ireland i beleive. 0
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Well I finally took the plunge earlier this week and decided to get myself a DAB Radio, especially with the offers that are going at Argos at the moment. I got myself the Acousitc Solutions Portal 2 radio which has a combined DAB/FM radio, not bad for £48.
Taken straight out of the box with the use of the whip antenna the sensitivity doesn't seem too good
on FM at least with even the usually uber-strong signal of Q101 giving a bit of hiss in stereo while on DAB the Score Multiplex (12D) was picked up reasonably well from Brougher Mountain, although aerial and radio postitioning is more crucial than FM. There wasn't a sniff of the BBC Multiplex from Divis, although the BBC site says that I souldn't be able to get it anyway.
However the whip antenna on this radio is detachable and in its place is an F connector socket which can take an external aerial. I happen to have in my attic a set of wabbit-ears (whose dipoles seem suited for Band III) set 180 degrees from each other, vertically polarised taped up to a wooden beam with a downlead down to me own room for use with an FM aerial which gave decent results compared to an ordinary FM whip.
With an F-Connector attached to the downlead and taken into the DAB/FM radio there was a massive improvement. On the Score Multiplex the signal level was now showing 14 to 15/16 whereas with the whip it was usually 8 or 9 and the BBC Multiplex now came blasting through with 12 to 14/16 in strength. Not bad considering the whip placed against a windowsill on the first floor facing Belfast could not pick up a sniff! It seem the grounding of an aerial very important in this case, something the whip didn't have. On FM there was a big improvement as well with Q102 and Highland coming in with clean stereo whereas with the whip they where poor in mono!
As for the quality, it was recently rumoured that the BBC recent bought new encoders for their DAB services and certainly listening to them it is quite hard to the untrained ear to tell most of the stations compared to FM, although remember this is a portable and not a Hi-Fi. However the Score multiplex was a different story. Cool FM & Citybeat sound OK, I haven't a reasonably good FM signal to compare them with though a little bit of artifacting is noticable. Q102 however was noticably poor with an a lot of artifacting. I don't know if it's the encoder or processing but compared to FM it's no contest. It is in fact shocking. For those without DAB, Q101 carries Q102 overnight, taking their feed from the DAB service. If you can & yer up late, switch between 101.2 and 102.9 with a set of earphones and the difference should be very clear. The Q Radio engineers should be looking to take the Q102 feed from FM instead of DAB, especially as a decent signal from Q102 can be received in Omagh.
Nevertheless it is very good to have the extra choice available, with BBC 5 Live sounding loud and clear a bonus. At the price I got the radio for, and if you can get both multiplexes it is certainly worth considering. Extras on the Portal 2 include Stereo speakers, a line-out (say for a Hi-Fi), six presets for both DAB and FM and FM also has RDS display.0 -
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DMC wrote:Comreg seem to think that a DVB-T on Band III might be better than DAB.... which is basically Freeview without the TV.... Interesting...
They are not the only ones. There is talk about it in France & Germany too -the arguement is that DAB technology is over 10 years old.
As DAB has not really established itself in many countries, me sees a potential crisis for this standard.
Will DAB follow the likes of D2 MAC or PAL+ ?
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