BBC Radio 4 reception in Dublin

Usjes

Hi,

Does anyone know what is the best wavelength to tune in BBC radio4 in Dublin? My mother listens to it, but it seems recently the reception has become terrible or BBC4 has vanished altogether. I tried sweeping on FM from 92MHz -> 104MHz but no sign of Radio4, has it moved recently? Should I be able to receive it in Dublin, the radio I'm using is a reasonably new Sony so if the station is available I would have expected to be able to receive it.

Any ideas ?

Thanks

Thoie

I pick it up on Longwave 198 in the car, but the reception is crap a lot of the time - electricity pylons etc interfere with it.

You can pick it up on the computer from the bbc website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/)

FM from Wales is around 103-105, but that's quite weather dependant.

greendom

If she has a satellite box she can pick it up on her tv - with Sky she will need to manually tune it in though. Details in the Satellite thread

BBC Radio 4 LW, 11.954 H 27500 2/3

Greenman

If she has internet get an standalone internet radio.

If she has cable TV connect a via the radio output to say a hifi unit.

Any help???

craoltoir

I find 198LW satisfactory all the time. It is also available on cable if you have that.

Greenman

craoltoir wrote: »

I find 198LW satisfactory all the time.

If OP's mother is in an apartment say in the kitchen with strip lighting and thick walls I think Radio 4 LW will suffer.

Usjes

Thanks for the replies, yes she has broadband and digital radio on UPC digital TV package, the problem however is that she uses the radio as an alarm clock and wants to wake up to radio4 in the morning and then listen to it in the bedroom and adjacent rooms while she potters around etc so I'd really like to be able to tune it on a standard radio which already has an alarm clock function. The room in question is semi basement in an old hose (walls 1 foot+ of granite so in theory reception could be a problem but the odd thing is she has had it tuned in for ages and apparently it just vanished recently (maybe a month ago? )

Any more ideas ?

craoltoir

If you were getting reception on FM it was probably from the cable signal. You should be able to connect the the FM signal from cable to any radio in the house with a wire aerial.If this is not practical the only other option would appear to be a video/audio sender which would allow you to receive the signal from one TV (includiing radio channels) on another.

Usjes

craoltoir wrote: »

If you were getting reception on FM it was probably from the cable signal. You should be able to connect the the FM signal from cable to any radio in the house with a wire aerial.If this is not practical the only other option would appear to be a video/audio sender which would allow you to receive the signal from one TV (includiing radio channels) on another.

Hi Craoltóír,

It was on FM that it was tuned, do you mean to say that the radio was never picking up radio4 from an intentional radio tranmitter but was rather tuning to the signal 'leaking' out from the NTL cable?
When you talk about connecting the FM from the cable to any radio with an aerial, how would this be done ? I think I have seen a second co-ax connector on the NTL box labelled 'FM' but how does this connect to the radio's aerial? Or do I just connect some sort of aerial to this co-ax output to act as a transmitter and then place this close to the radio aerial ?

Thanks,

Usjes.

Greenman

Usjes wrote: »

I think I have seen a second co-ax connector on the NTL box labelled 'FM' but how does this connect to the radio's aerial? Or do I just connect some sort of aerial to this co-ax output to act as a transmitter and then place this close to the radio aerial ?

Thanks,

Usjes.

To start off I think an Internet radio is only man.

Otherwise as mentioned connect some light coax to the output labelled FM and rap the otherend of the coax around the needed radios antenna, sounds a little MM but its a start otherwise consider say mini hifi unit, something like this, just check it has an FM antenna input plus alarm.
Keep us posted and your mother has her beloved Radio 4 back.

bob50

Usjes wrote: »

Hi Craoltóír,

It was on FM that it was tuned, do you mean to say that the radio was never picking up radio4 from an intentional radio tranmitter but was rather tuning to the signal 'leaking' out from the NTL cable?
When you talk about connecting the FM from the cable to any radio with an aerial, how would this be done ? I think I have seen a second co-ax connector on the NTL box labelled 'FM' but how does this connect to the radio's aerial? Or do I just connect some sort of aerial to this co-ax output to act as a transmitter and then place this close to the radio aerial ?

Thanks,

Hi There as the OP says the R4 signal is coming from the ntl cable so just connect a coat hanger to fm socket and as you say place it on the radios external aerial

R4 or any other bbc station never brodcast to part of the world all we can rely on is the signal strenght from either wales or the north

_blank_

Weird thing about this.

I have a Hi-Fi in my bedroom with a coax port on the back, and a length of coax running from the ntl box FM socket in the sitting room, out a hole, up the house and in the air-vent in the bedroom.

But the standard coax plug on the bedroom end of the cable doesn't fit into the port on the Hi-Fi as both are either male, or both are female.

tbh

Des wrote: »

Weird thing about this.

I have a Hi-Fi in my bedroom with a coax port on the back, and a length of coax running from the ntl box FM socket in the sitting room, out a hole, up the house and in the air-vent in the bedroom.

But the standard coax plug on the bedroom end of the cable doesn't fit into the port on the Hi-Fi as both are either male, or both are female.

you can get a gender changer Des, should cost you less than a Euro.

Usjes

Greenman wrote: »

To start off I think an Internet radio is only man.

Otherwise as mentioned connect some light coax to the output labelled FM and rap the otherend of the coax around the needed radios antenna, sounds a little MM but its a start otherwise consider say mini hifi unit, something like this, just check it has an FM antenna input plus alarm.
Keep us posted and your mother has her beloved Radio 4 back.

Hi Greenman,

The radio she is using is a Sony hifi which looks very like the one in your picture and it does have a co-ax input for an aerial, so are you saying I can just take the NTL box FM out put via coax and input it directly to the aerial input at the back of the hifi? Is the Radio4 on NTL in raw FM though? We have a basic digital package so I had assumed that the radio stations we can listen to on the TV were modulated digitally rather than being in raw FM, I presume a standard HiFi like the Sony above will not be able to decode the Radio4 if it is only transmitted in a digital format ? Or do they transmit the radio in both digital and analog on the basic digital package? I know we still get the TV signals in analog as well as digital.

Thanks,

tbh

Usjes wrote: »

Hi Greenman,

The radio she is using is a Sony hifi which looks very like the one in your picture and it does have a co-ax input for an aerial, so are you saying I can just take the NTL box FM out put via coax and input it directly to the aerial input at the back of the hifi? Is the Radio4 on NTL in raw FM though? We have a basic digital package so I had assumed that the radio stations we can listen to on the TV were modulated digitally rather than being in raw FM, I presume a standard HiFi like the Sony above will not be able to decode the Radio4 if it is only transmitted in a digital format ? Or do they transmit the radio in both digital and analog on the basic digital package? I know we still get the TV signals in analog as well as digital.

Thanks,

you should be able to stick the coax in the back of the stereo and tune in - obviously the frequencies are all a little screwy, but they are all there. Hopefully it won't be too long before all the BBC stations are available over DAB anyway.

Usjes

Hi,

Thanks for all the help, I took the NTL coax feed and plugged it into the back of her radio and now it receives Radio4 no problem. However her next question was what about the radio in the kitchen ???
I could obviously put another splitter in a feed the NTL coax to the kitchen also but this is not practical due to the house layout. So, it got me to thinking is there not some sort of mini FM transmitter that I could buy? ie. essentially just an amplifier+ aerial which would take the NTL coax as an input and then just boost and broadcast the FM signal all over the house so that any standard radio in the vicinity could receive it. Does such a product exist ? I did some brief googling for FM transmitters but all the results are for iPod add ons so that you can play the mp3s from your iPod on any standard radio. I suppose what I want is essentially the exact same device but with just a coax input and no need to modulate the signal as its already in FM, it seems like this should be a very simple device, are they for sale, or could I build one myself quickly with off-the-shelf parts ?

Any thoughts ?

Thanks.

Greenman

Usjes wrote: »

Hi,

Thanks for all the help, I took the NTL coax feed and plugged it into the back of her radio and now it receives Radio4 no problem. However her next question was what about the radio in the kitchen ???
I could obviously put another splitter in a feed the NTL coax to the kitchen also but this is not practical due to the house layout. So, it got me to thinking is there not some sort of mini FM transmitter that I could buy? ie. essentially just an amplifier+ aerial which would take the NTL coax as an input and then just boost and broadcast the FM signal all over the house so that any standard radio in the vicinity could receive it. Does such a product exist ? I did some brief googling for FM transmitters but all the results are for iPod add ons so that you can play the mp3s from your iPod on any standard radio. I suppose what I want is essentially the exact same device but with just a coax input and no need to modulate the signal as its already in FM, it seems like this should be a very simple device, are they for sale, or could I build one myself quickly with off-the-shelf parts ?

Any thoughts ?

Thanks.

Well thats a result:)

Re those so called Ipod transmitters I wouldn't bother as you won't get the range.

Thanks for letting us know what transpired:)

JD

Darcon

Any recommendation for a portable radio to receive BBC R4 LW Shipping forecast off the west coast of Ireland?

Greenman

Sony,Panasonic Roberts any of those will work. Radio from the net is great or satellite.

Tell us how you get on.

8 years later, I'm still here. ;-)

Try_harder

BBC Radio have a great App for your smartphone

ford fiesta

Darcon wrote: »

Any recommendation for a portable radio to receive BBC R4 LW Shipping forecast off the west coast of Ireland?

Purchase a good second hand one on donedeal or adverts from the 70s or 80s much better for LW and MW than the new ones available