The future of RTE Radio 1 LW

Johnboy1951

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I thought about it 'way back' for some years after I got my RO ticket, but never bothered.
I moved in a different direction.

Fair enough, many do, not too late, very exciting though once you can transmit and experiment with different stuff and the various modes. I wish I had got my license years ago, only have the license since May 2019.

doughnut2000

I never got the amateur radio thing myself. I can see why people might enjoy it but doesn't seem a lot you can do.

doughnut2000

doughnut2000 wrote: »

I never got the amateur radio thing myself. I can see why people might enjoy it but doesn't seem a lot you can do.

Amateur radio is a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

I like the Thrill of being able to contact As far away as Chile with just 100 watts of power and a portable vertical on the front lawn and just 1 single radial. The thrill to me is the far away contact with minimal setup. Or being able to speak to someone in Sydney with 100 watts and a simple End Fed Half Wave, that gave me a real buzz.

I also like being able to chat to different people from different places about different things.

I like FT8 when i'm not in the mood for chatting and want to be in the sitting room, I can still work the radio and check out how far my signal is getting out.

I like working PSK31 and Olivia, keyboard to keyboard chat.

Being able to pack up the car with the radio gear and head off on a nice day with another ham friend with a packed lunch.

Being able to experiment with different gear and hopefully build stuff in the future when I get more time, it's a hobby for life really.

It's just so much more interesting when you have the license.

If you ever want to listen to my SDRs you can tune into my Kiwi SDRs in the below links.

http://emeraldsdr.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/

http://emeraldsdr.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/

Mickey Mike

Just looking at RTE teletext, Radio1 LW will be off air from 20th june to 12th of august for essential maintenance, a long time off air whatever they'll be doing, its a chance to upgrade signal strength and change frequency, its probably the most maintained TX in the country.

Mickey Mike

Mickey Mike wrote: »

Just looking at RTE teletext, Radio1 LW will be off air from 20th june to 12th of august for essential maintenance, a long time off air whatever they'll be doing, its a chance to upgrade signal strength and change frequency, its probably the most maintained TX in the country.

It's BS, they're not going to do anything with that mast if they intend tearing it down and turning it into scrap metal.

They just want to see how many People scream when it goes off, in the data centre industry we call it the scream test, when we are decommissioning equipment we turn it off for 5 days to see if service owners come back screaming they can't access something even though they're supposed to know already, it's the final stage before the equipment gets ripped out.

RTE might be hoping People find alternative means of listening and/or lie and say that the transmitter or mast is going to cost too much to repair and keep it off air, this could be the end of it.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

doughnut2000 wrote: »

I never got the amateur radio thing myself. I can see why people might enjoy it but doesn't seem a lot you can do.

I'd say the main reason it's hard to get our heads around it nowadays is we're so used to instant, unlimited broadband communication being totally ubiquitous with the Internet. If you go back to the 1950s to almost 2000, international telecommunications was possible, but prohibitively expensive, certainly before the 1990s.

People being able to talk to others who were hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of km away was a huge deal in those days and radio was pretty much the only kind of access anyone had to it, other than the odd, very pricy phone call.

We're living in a different world technologically speaking to the time when amateur radio evolved, but it still has a niche hobbyist use.

Ger Roe

FuzzyThinking wrote: »

I'd say the main reason it's hard to get our heads around it nowadays is we're so used to instant, unlimited broadband communication being totally ubiquitous with the Internet. If you go back to the 1950s to almost 2000, international telecommunications was possible, but prohibitively expensive, certainly before the 1990s.

People being able to talk to others who were hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of km away was a huge deal in those days and radio was pretty much the only kind of access anyone had to it, other than the odd, very pricy phone call.

We're living in a different world technologically speaking to the time when amateur radio evolved, but it still has a niche hobbyist use.

Or when the Zombie Apocalypse, or alien invasion, hits. It is always radio hams that save the day in the films

Johnboy1951

Mickey Mike wrote: »

Just looking at RTE teletext, Radio1 LW will be off air from 20th june to 12th of august for essential maintenance, a long time off air whatever they'll be doing, its a chance to upgrade signal strength and change frequency, its probably the most maintained TX in the country.

Is that because it is the one with most problems?

Mickey Mike

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Is that because it is the one with most problems?

That's what it looks like, 567MW was never off like that.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

Why haven’t they removed the big AM tower at Mahon on the N40 ring just south of Cork City?

It’s been off air for a very long time and isn’t very likely to be used again for anything else. Just seems like a very big structure to continue maintenance of.

dxhound2005

Mickey Mike wrote: »

That's what it looks like, 567MW was never off like that.

I have a memory of it being off at certain times, including one very long break. It is not easy to find the information, but this from 2008 seems to confirm what I remember.

http://www.globalirish.ie/2008/letter-highlights-mw-problems-in-north/

It’s also worth noting that in 2004, the 567kHz transmitter was off air for four whole months due to maintenance. I can’t remember ever reading or hearing any outrage about people not being able to listen to RTE during that time.

Antenna

dxhound2005 wrote: »

It’s also worth noting that in 2004, the 567kHz transmitter was off air for four whole months due to maintenance. I can’t remember ever reading or hearing any outrage about people not being able to listen to RTE during that time.[/I]

Don't forget that 567MW switch off occurred a few months after RTE started transmitting Radio 1 on 252 LW also.
Listeners beyond FM range in Northern Ireland and the Irish community in GB were directed to retune to the newly available 252LW with also the promise of a generally improved reception.

There were complaints at the time, such as from those with car radios without LW, (and by then not really feasible to swap out the radio in many modern cars, )

RTE also did a frequency swap of RTE Radio 1 with Lyric FM at Clermont Carn as 87.8 was more favorable/clearer for reception in areas of Northern Ireland to give cross-border RTE Radio 1 reception priority.

Glaceon

FuzzyThinking wrote: »

Why haven’t they removed the big AM tower at Mahon on the N40 ring just south of Cork City?

It’s been off air for a very long time and isn’t very likely to be used again for anything else. Just seems like a very big structure to continue maintenance of.

Looking at it on Street View I can see mobile cells attached to it now. But they're very low down so it could be possible to at least shorten it.

RTE on 252 LW is now off air...

RIP!

Lets all call them up and ask where's it gone. In my area of I.T This is what we call the scream test.

Mickey Mike

2 months is quite a length to be off, what are they doing? maybe raising the height of the mast, or installing a new 500kw TX and maybe changing the frequency so it won't interfere with Algerian radio which is on the same 252 frequency.
Or just as Mad-Lad said "how many will scream" a test format, they may just do nothing with it.

Mickey Mike

Mickey Mike wrote: »

2 months is quite a length to be off, what are they doing? maybe raising the height of the mast, or installing a new 500kw TX and maybe changing the frequency so it won't interfere with Algerian radio which is on the same 252 frequency.
Or just as Mad-Lad said "how many will scream" a test format, they may just do nothing with it.

That's my bet, that they will not do anything with it but it would be great if someone could take a look and take some pics and video if they do see work going on on the site.

They could say that they discovered issues with the mast and it's simply too expensive to repair lol.

But on the RTE site they did say essential maintenance to ensure 252 Khz can stay on the air so we'll see.

Can anyone remember if they said maintenance is on the transmitter or mast ?

Glaceon

Mickey Mike wrote: »

2 months is quite a length to be off, what are they doing? maybe raising the height of the mast, or installing a new 500kw TX and maybe changing the frequency so it won't interfere with Algerian radio which is on the same 252 frequency.
Or just as Mad-Lad said "how many will scream" a test format, they may just do nothing with it.

Someone on here said they’re replacing the mast insulators. Same job that was done at Tullamore a couple of years before closure.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

That's my bet, that they will not do anything with it but it would be great if someone could take a look and take some pics and video if they do see work going on on the site.

They could say that they discovered issues with the mast and it's simply too expensive to repair lol.

But on the RTE site they did say essential maintenance to ensure 252 Khz can stay on the air so we'll see.

Can anyone remember if they said maintenance is on the transmitter or mast ?

Exactly what I suspect they will do.

Mickey Mike

What did they do to it 2 years ago when it was off for 10 weeks, with no change in improvement, this current work was to be carried out last year but Covid prevented this from happening, its more of a mast job alright like insulator replacement, and of course they might close it down after that, God only knows.

Mickey Mike

Mickey Mike wrote: »

What did they do to it 2 years ago when it was off for 10 weeks, with no change in improvement, this current work was to be carried out last year but Covid prevented this from happening, its more of a mast job alright like insulator replacement, and of course they might close it down after that, God only knows.

Since when has RTE cared about wasting taxpayers money ? lol

Yes they did mast work when it was off last time.

I reckon they will say something along the lines of "serious structural defects were discovered upon inspection" & then detonate the guy ropes...

Glaceon

Mickey Mike wrote: »

What did they do to it 2 years ago when it was off for 10 weeks, with no change in improvement, this current work was to be carried out last year but Covid prevented this from happening, its more of a mast job alright like insulator replacement, and of course they might close it down after that, God only knows.

Baseplate replacement, they said.

Gerry Wicklow

Deleted User wrote: »

Since when has RTE cared about wasting taxpayers money ? lol

Yes they did mast work when it was off last time.

That sounds about right. Spend thousands overhauling it and scrap it a few weeks later. "Hey it's only tax payers money"

marclt

Always thought LW252 should be a mix of RTE’s output anyway - rather than just radio 1.

Whatever hope of listeners on MW, LW is long gone

ClosedAccountFuzzy

A lot of radios don't have LW at all. I always thought they should have prioritised retaining MW if they were going to keep an AM service alive at all.

Longwave receivers aren't exactly ubiquitous and haven't been in recent decades. Even a lot of 1980s and certainly 90s radios didn't have LW.

doughnut2000

Anyone called in about the loss of the signal?

athlone573

What is the purpose of the "mast insulators"? To protect against lightning or something else?

It doesn't seem like a good use of taxpayer (or TV license) money alright.

dxhound2005

This is a chance for anyone interested to hear Denmark on 243 in the clear. I'm not sure of the schedule, but it is very limited. They are certainly there on Sunday mornings.

Czechia on 270 might not appreciate us moving to 261. It is a good signal in Ireland at present, but would suffer from RTE being on 261. They probably have expats here using the service.

dxhound2005

dxhound2005 wrote: »

This is a chance for anyone interested to hear Denmark on 243 in the clear. I'm not sure of the schedule, but it is very limited. They are certainly there on Sunday mornings.

Czechia on 270 might not appreciate us moving to 261. It is a good signal in Ireland at present, but would suffer from RTE being on 261. They probably have expats here using the service.

The Czech station on 270 will be going this December last I heard.