longwave transmitter

MOONBABY240

l wonder if the rumour that RTE is closing the lw transmitter is true ? Pat rabbitte was asked about it in the dail, he replied that as minister he has no power what frequencys RTE broadcast their radio stations on.

watty

That's not actually true that he has no power. He just refuses to exercise it. EU directives to help protect the consumer lead to BAI/BCI and OTDR/DCNER etc. The Government (really the Civil Service) uses them both as a way to avoid responsibility and both only help Established Commercial Interests (Setanta & TV3, Eircom and Mobile) rather than the Country's Infrastructure, quality of service and content for Consumers / Citizens.

It was off the air recently.

Unfortunately RTE doesn't take it's PSB remit seriously. The information, debate & consultation about MW close down was practically non-existent.

They wasted a fortune on a partial roll out of obsolete and useless DAB and waste money on extra stations on it rather than improving RTE1 and VHF coverage.

RTE did experimental External Services on SW twice, last was 1948. Their current Radio on Sky Platform and RTE1 LW with some content to WRN is their lip service to idea of an External Service. In this they are correct as it should come from a separate Government Budget, not out of RTE's funds for Irish National Broadcasting.

Actually RTE shouldn't be spending a cent on coverage to N.I. That should be entirely Government funded as N.I. Residents pay UK TV licence.




You can't use portable DAB or VHF-FM in many places without extended whip /aerial. MW worked everywhere. LW works everywhere and is the only portable RTE (or Mobile in Car) for most of N.I.

Since so few new radios have LW it was short sighted and arrogant bean counting to close the MW transmitters.

Bean counting and Ego at RTE rather than needs of listeners will decide.

Turn the radio on

RTE R1 launched on 252 longwave 10 years ago this Month. I reckon it will close by the end of this decade.

watty

Why?

Turn the radio on

watty wrote: »

Why?

Declining listenership and declining availability of radio sets with LW.

watty

The second is true, have you proof of 1st, esp in UK?

However Tesco sells an excellent €10 "World Radio" superior to most DAB sets! LW, MW, VHF-FM and 9 SW bands. The Aldi/Lidl digital display Clock/World Radios are total junk in comparison, useless for other than presets and lose them when shaken or batteries changed. DAB Coverage is rubbish, quality poorer than FM, Battery consumption x10 worse than 1950s Valve portable Radio never mind the Tesco sets and only has RTE on it.

Besides it's
a) A vital Public service. There is nothing else with the coverage.
b) Important in any huge infrastructure disaster
c) Ireland's only genuine Radio service available in UK. We are rubbish at external services. Since 1922 always have been. One brief SW moment in 1948. Internet and Satellite despite the hype and apparent cost saving are not ubiquitous Broadcast delivery systems.

RTE and BBC ought to think of promoting decent radio sets (most are junk) rather than dead end DAB and Internet, which for all it's wonders can't ever replace Radio & TV broadcast, it's complementary.

Onthe3rdDay

watty wrote: »

The second is true, have you proof of 1st, esp in UK?

However Tesco sells an excellent €10 "World Radio" superior to most DAB sets! LW, MW, VHF-FM and 9 SW bands. The Aldi/Lidl digital display Clock/World Radios are total junk in comparison, useless for other than presets and lose them when shaken or batteries changed. DAB Coverage is rubbish, quality poorer than FM, Battery consumption x10 worse than 1950s Valve portable Radio never mind the Tesco sets and only has RTE on it.

Besides it's
a) A vital Public service. There is nothing else with the coverage.
b) Important in any huge infrastructure disaster
c) Ireland's only genuine Radio service available in UK. We are rubbish at external services. Since 1922 always have been. One brief SW moment in 1948. Internet and Satellite despite the hype and apparent cost saving are not ubiquitous Broadcast delivery systems.

RTE and BBC ought to think of promoting decent radio sets (most are junk) rather than dead end DAB and Internet, which for all it's wonders can't ever replace Radio & TV broadcast, it's complementary.

It's a common tactic by some in the UK to say that LW is not used anymore, they're usually those that are fanatical about DAB. Many that I know in the UK still Listen to Radio 4 on LW but interference from electrical devices does mean that listeners are starting to drift away.

I was stuck in Cork a few weeks ago when storms knocked out power to most of the county. LW was very useful at the time.

As for our attempts at International Broadcasting it's been embarrassing. For years you had to ring a telephone number in Brussels if you wanted to hear a feed of RTE Radio One. However there was a service run by the Army During the sixties for Soldiers in the Congo.

http://www.curragh.info/articles/radio.htm

watty

I have a 1949 radio with Ireland (Athlone) marked on the Shortwave! Apparently we bought a not really powerful enough SW TX and ran it during 1948!

Copyerselveson

Rumours of LW's imminent death have been around for many years, but yet it's still here and as Watty rightly says it does provide Ireland's only external(ish) radio service.

With a decent set RTE on 252 comes in well here in London, however on modern car radios with those stubby excuses of antennas it's very poor although that is really because any kind of AM on car radios is really designed in as an afterthought.

When RTE tested DRM on 252 some years back I was able to pick up a good clear signal late at night even allowing for the overpowering signal from Algeria that shares the frequency.

I'm not sure what the future holds for DRM but I do think it would be a very foolish step to abandon the LW service. If anything, RTE should increase the power of 252 to its maximum, as I believe they are operating on half the power they are authorised to operate on. Could someone confirm that?

zg3409

Copyerselveson wrote: »

RTE should increase the power of 252 to its maximum, as I believe they are operating on half the power they are authorised to operate on. Could someone confirm that?

They are on half the power levels compared to the Atlantic 252 music station days. This is to save on electricity costs and the fact their main audience is not in london unlike the older station.

I am not sure if they could go up to full power now, as in if all the equipment is still connected and working for full power. I think they put in a new transmitter when they went to RTE voice transmissions, I think anyway.

Turn the radio on

They can't do 500kw anymore. The new transmitter installed in 2007 can only do 300kw.

watty

The "new" transmitter is more linear (allows DRM) and also more efficient. They did do DRM tests overnight for a while. However it turns out that while DRM seems like a good idea on paper, it's more pointless than DAB. The radio sets are too power hungry, too slow to tune, far too expensive and also very few companies prepared to make them. The Chip Set in the Morphy-Richards one isn't made any more. Glen-Dimplex owns Roberts and Morphy Richards now and not much to choose over Argos' Bush labelled Chinese stuff.

Fit a decent 75cm whip on the car. Dramatic improvement on VHF-FM and MW/LW, not expensive.

The TX was indeed replaced. The original was a pair of 300kW Continental Electronics units which generally ran at 250kW each. These were replaced by a single Transradio 300kW solid state transmitter which, as Watty said, was intended for DRM use.

I read somewhere that the Continentals were very inefficient because being an American manufacturer, they had little or no experience with LW gear and hadn't built one before.

STB

Turn the radio on wrote: »

They can't do 500kw anymore. The new transmitter installed in 2007 can only do 300kw.

And only runs @ 100k at night anyhoo....

I never understood why that photo is on the Continental Electronics website, because they didn't make it! They built the old ones that it replaced.

STB

Karsini wrote: »

I never understood why that photo is on the Continental Electronics website, because they didn't make it! They built the old ones that it replaced.

Do CEC make LW Tx's anymore ?

They use the Transradio DRM exciters with their own range of SW Tx's.

STB

STB wrote: »

Do CEC make LW Tx's anymore ?

They use the Transradio DRM exciters with their own range of SW Tx's.

Ah, that makes sense.

I'm not sure if they even make MW TXs anymore, most new ones I've seen tend to be Harris units.

Turn the radio on

rte don't do a good job of advertising the 252 lw service. Cheltenham is being broadcast on it at the moment but they haven't even listed it in the rte guide or plugged it on the sports news.

watty

Everyone has to reduce LW & MW power at night. It's in the "rules".

It would be havoc otherwise.

Antenna

watty wrote: »

The information, debate & consultation about MW close down was practically non-existent.

With LW to replace MW RTE radio, there ought to have been consultation with manufacturers, especially car manufacturers about the future availability of LW coverage on car radios - mobile is where LW would be of most use to people, and it is hardly feasible to later change the radio in modern cars nowadays.

here's a pic of someone's Volkswagen car radio (2 year old car) I checked and it certainly does not have LW coverage, its AM mode is 531-1602kHz only (MW), doesn't include LW. The soundsystem is called RCD310

watty

None of the Aldi / Lidl car radios have had LW.
I saw a nice Sony a few years ago that did in the local co-op.

The problem is that actually none of the "traditional" European makers exist (they are all badges) and the Chinese and most Asians only building for North American market (190kHz to 480KHz Aeronautical & Maritime beacons instead of 160kHz to 300kHz Broadcast). I'd bet they even all have US de-emphasis on VHF-FM.

Lloydtron and Tesco are the only affordable portables I have seen with LW, MW & VHF lately in Limerick shops. Most 1950s and many 1960s portables are better

The Roberts Revival at €149 are inferior to the €10 Tesco "World Radio" and is the only other LW, MW & VHF set retail in Limerick I have seen.

Jason_

Does anybody know how often would someone be at the site ? I want to find out have they got any Atlantic 252 memorabilia in storage there.

zg3409

Jason_ wrote: »

Does anybody know how often would someone be at the site ? I want to find out have they got any Atlantic 252 memorabilia in storage there.

I know in the Atlantic 252 days the engineers had pagers which sent them a message with the error code. They then could be on call off-site, and respond quickly. However now a days I would say it's even less likely someone would be on site 24/7. Its a division of RTENL or 2RN as it's now known. I doubt much Atlantic 252 stuff is lying around but it might be worth a phone call.

STB

Jason_ wrote: »

Does anybody know how often would someone be at the site ? I want to find out have they got any Atlantic 252 memorabilia in storage there.

Like what ?

http://www.atlantic252.com/

http://www.dxarchive.com/downloads_atlantic_252.html

Greg Park has a few videos including a TX tour on his youtube site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdeFTOjkpzY

Jason_

I reckon RTE would have closed the LW252 service by now if they hadn't installed an new transmitter back in 2007, the old two transmitters were very expensive and inefficient to run, I was told the cost of running the service has fallen by 50% since the new transmitter was installed.

Were the original transmitters sold or just scrapped?

Jason_

Karsini wrote: »

Were the original transmitters sold or just scrapped?

Scrapped.

Longwave Listener

Now that it is Confirmed to be closing on October 27th, I wonder Could/would RTE allow someone like Paul Rusling or Ray Anderson use it ?

icdg

There are two current threads dealing with this. No need to drag up an old one.